‘Sports has to be accessible to everyone. Everyone must have the possibility to enjoy sports regardless of age, physical or mental health, ethnicity, sexual orientation or social position. […] Therefore, we let go of pigeonholing. We will stop exclusion. This situation becomes self-evident because we are aiming at creating ‘inclusive sports’ (Bruins et al. 2018: 11-14).

In 2018, The Dutch government wrote and adopted an accord; the Dutch National Sports-accord’. The minister of ‘Public Health, Well-Being and Sports’ argues that sports, and in the Netherlands mostly football, is a suitable site to create ‘inclusion’. As stated in the quote above, the Dutch current sports world sometimes obstructs participating based on several social categories. In this blog, I will outline a case-study about the Dutch football club ‘Onder Ons’ (Among Us) in Utrecht (the fourth biggest city in the Netherlands) conducted by Dutch government and organization scholars and anthropologists. This study shows that forced integration policy does not create bridges or resolve ‘ethnic’ differences in the club’s culture.

Football club ‘Among Us’
‘Among Us’ is an amateur football club in Utrecht, established in 1948 in a mostly ‘white Dutch’ area. Because of urban development reasons in the 1960s, the club had to move to the other side of the city, Overvecht, where most residents were from Moroccan descents (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1360). Due to these spacial and demographic changes, more ‘Moroccan Dutch’ residents signed up, while more ‘white Dutch members’ left. The club ended up in financial troubles and asked the municipality for support. The municipality wanted to financially support the club on the condition that ‘Among Us’ would ‘develop towards a club of mixed ethnicity with a membership that would mirror the neighbourhood’s increasingly diverse population’ (ibid). In order to meet these requirements partly, the club merged with a ‘Moroccan Dutch’ football club. To create an ‘ethnic mosaic’ in the club, the municipality also demanded more representation of the Moroccan Dutch members in the management in order to give them a voice in the policies of the club (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1360).

Analyzing sports clubs
In order to understand how the two groups (white Dutch members and Moroccan-Dutch members) experienced and perceived this transition, we need to analyze the concept of a sports club. ‘Sports clubs are voluntary associations characterized by bonding relationships between like-minded people [..] and are symbolically constructed communities of people who share common understandings’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1363). Members of a sports club share the capacity to make use of shared symbols, but also interpret and understand them. According to Cohen (1985), we can understand a sports club as a ‘community of meaning’. In such communities, people become aware of their symbols and meanings when ‘others’ come too close or penetrate the symbolic boundaries of their community. As a result, the encounter between a member of the community and an ‘other’ creates dynamics of emphasizing the ‘cultural content’ and at the same time emphasizing the boundaries between the community and ‘the others’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1363). In other words, dynamics and relations between groups tend to define or reinforce differences.
‘Among Us’ can be analyzed as a community and a site of identity formations. If we take a historical perspective, sports clubs were founded by people of the same village, church or social community in the Netherlands (Van Bottenburg 2007: 2). This gather of people with the same ‘lifestyle’ is still present and defines the sports club. Sports clubs in the Netherlands are thus building upon a feeling of a cohesive (but always negotiated) system of symbolic understandings and attempts to teach those understandings to newcomers (ibid).

Established-outsiders’ theory
Slobbe et al. make use of the ‘established-outsiders’ theory by Norbert Elias and John Scotson to understand the dynamics between the members of the ‘Among Us’ community/football club and ‘the others’. Important aspects in their relations are ‘power balance’ and ‘mutual dependency’, what they term a figuration (Slobbe et al, 2013: 1365). The interdependences are constructed by power which is relational and reciprocal; the group who claims to have power (the established) is dependent on the group without or with less claims on power (the outsiders) and the vice versa. The duration of the existence of the figuration ‘enabled the ‘established’ to develop greater cohesion relative to the outsiders and this, in turn, enabled them to monopolize key positions in local associations. Consequently, the ‘established’ were able to define the local rules of the game and reproduce a historically grown position of power’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1366).
According to the authors, we can understand the white, Dutch members of ‘Among Us’ as ‘the established’ and the Moroccan Dutch members as ‘the outsiders’. So the organizational culture and thus the symbols and understandings of ‘Among Us’ are constructed based on the figuration of the ‘powerful, white Dutch, established’ and the ‘less powerful Moroccan Dutch outsiders’. Their figuration changed when the municipality demanded a transition towards a more ‘ethnic diverse’ club. Instead of creating an ethnic mosaic, the new policies caused tensions regarding the cultural meaning and reinforced notions of ‘us-them’ relationships. I like to illustrate this with an example of serving beer and tea in the club’s canteen.

Beer and tea in the canteen
In the canteen of ‘Among Us’, there is a prominent spot for two beer taps and signs of beer brands. Drinking beer, labelled as ‘the third half of the football match’ is an important aspect of ‘football culture’ and is, furthermore, highly important as an income source for the club (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1367). It is also a marker of the atmosphere at the club; having a beer afterwards is considered as a pillar of ‘Among Us’. However, the beer tap and beer brands signs caused tension between the ‘established’, who foster those particular practices and artefacts, and the ‘outsiders’, who are Islamic and therefore don’t drink alcohol, but tea (ibid). At the time, one Moroccan Dutch member, Fatima, asked the bar committee why they did not sell tea. The ‘established’ bar chief, Ari, responded: “We will not sell tea […] in our canteen. Over my dead body! “(Slobbe et al. 2013: 1367). Despite Ari’s objections, Moroccan tea was sold in the canteen. By raising this question, Fatima pointed out feelings of inequality and uneven power dynamics, which is shared by more members of the club.

This incident shows struggles regarding understandings and meaning-making processes of cultural practices in the club. We can understand that the canteen’s space and the artefacts are not neutral, but it is an ‘established’ embodied space which ‘symbolize the ‘oldness of association’ of the white Dutch members (Slobbe et al, 2013: 1367). If we apply the established-outsiders’ theory, we can understand that the ‘established’ have had power for a long time to decide what beverages were sold in the canteen and thus had the power to shape the space of the canteen. The ‘established’ bar chief became more aware of his own share meaning and practices regarding drinking beer, because of the penetration of the Moroccan Dutch who refuse to drink alcohol and preferred drinking tea. In other words, ‘the white Dutch members, feeling that their community was undermined, started to symbolically reinforce the (exclusionary) boundaries of their community’ (Slobbe et al.2013: 1367).

Performance of ‘Among Us’
I think this case-study is really interesting because I live in the Netherlands and I am familiar with the neighbourhood in Utrecht. However, I feel like there is some theoretical analysis lacking in this study. The authors examine ‘the Dutch’, ‘the Dutch-Moroccan’ and ‘the club-culture’ as something that exists and is identifiable. In my opinion, it disregards social dynamics and fluidity. I think that the notion of ‘performance’ could help to give those notion theoretical saturation. Performance, according to Bettie, ‘refers to agency and a conscious attempt at passing’ (2014:52). In this case, we can understand performance when we look at the tea-example. On the one hand, the ‘established’ perform their notion of ‘Among Us’ by foregrounding and emphasizing the beer tap and beer brand signs. On the other hand, the ‘outsiders’ perform their notion of ‘Among Us’ by foregrounding and emphasizing the tea. The authors assume that there is a bounded and fixed identity regarding the ‘established’ and the ‘outsiders’ but Bettie (2014) shows that identities are more complex. She states that performance is the identity. However, people do have the feeling that their identity is fixed and static. Thus, in this case, the ‘established’ feel like they have an ‘established’ identity and the ‘outsiders’ feel like they have an ‘outsiders’ identity. Betties explains by stating that constructed identities are institutionalized; there is a fixed element of identity what makes people think they have a fixed ‘identity’ (Bettie 2014: 53).

In other words, I believe that we cannot talk about ‘the Dutch’ and ‘the Dutch-Moroccan’ because the performance is the identity and is thus shifting and always negotiated (Bettie 2014). In my opinion, the authors should provide some sort of theoretical analysis because ‘there is no such thing as ‘an identity’ or ‘a self’; the self or identity is not natural, it is always constructed and performed’ (Bettie 2014: 52).

Conclusion
In the Netherlands, sports are seen as an instrument to create social integration for ‘ethnic minorities’ and in this view, sports thus functions as a bridge between ethnic groups. Ethnic separate clubs are considered ‘disintegrated’ and therefore the Dutch government and municipalities work together to create ‘inclusive and open’ sports clubs. However, as Slobbe et al. argue, ‘the transition towards a mixed management led to a conflict over understandings about the symbolic practices and artefacts within the club’s organizational culture’ (2013: 1371). As a result, the boundaries between the ‘established’ and ‘outsiders’ intensify and the ‘us-them’ dynamics become more clear. Although I am very interested in this topic and those dynamics, I believe that more theoretical analysis is necessary to understand the notion of ‘the established’ and ‘the outsider’. Those notions miss, in my opinion, a theoretical layer in this article. Therefore, I pointed out the notion of ‘performances’ to understand the dynamics between ‘us’ and ‘them’ but also within those categories. This is important to challenge because groups, symbols, understandings and meanings are never static, but are always negotiated and challenged.

References:

– Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
– Bruins, B., L. Bolsius, J. van Zanen, & A. Bolhuis (2018) Nationaal Sportakkoord- ‘Sport verenigt Nederland’ Den Haag, Rijksoverheid.
– Slobbe, van. M, J. Vermeulen & M. Koster (2013) ‘The making of an ethnically diverse management: contested cultural meanings in a Dutch amateur football club’ Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 16-10: 1360-1374.
– Van Bottenburg, M. (2007). Om de sport verenigd: instituties in de sportwereld.

‘Britain’s South Asian community represents around five per cent of the total population, yet only two players from that community – Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury and Aston Villa’s Neil Taylor – are part of Premier League first-team squads‘ (Sky Sports 27/08/19)

In this final blog, I discuss an ethnography by Daniel Burdsey ‘British Asians and Football- Culture, Identity and Exclusion’ (2007). As stated in the quote of Sky Sports, British Asian football players are significantly under-represented in professional football regarding their share in the total population of the United Kingdom. Burdsey outlines multiple popular and academic explanations for this exclusion and concludes that football is ‘an extremely important social arena for the articulation and contestation of identity’ (Burdsey 2007: 95), which constructs processes, structures and attitudes of exclusion of British Asian football players in the Premier League.

British Asians in British Football
Burdsey’s ethnography is focused on male, British Asian football players at the elite level. Those footballers have South Asian (Bangladesh, India or Pakistan) roots and are in possession of the British citizenship (Burdsey 2007: 11). Important to understand in this terminology is the heterogeneity and diversity concerning the experiences, identities and lifestyles of the men. There is no such thing as ‘British Asianness’. Burdsey still uses this concept because it is often used in discussions regarding this topic by multiple actors (Burdsey 2007: 11). This note is important while reading the rest of this analysis. Let’s return to the case study itself. British Asian footballers are significantly under-represented in the first division of the football league, while they are over-represented in the lower and amateur divisions. Their absence at the elite division is a peculiar situation because football is ‘a popular leisure activity among many British Asian men, and it also plays a key role in post-migratory male lifestyles’ (Burdsey 2007: 37). In other words, ‘football is a popular and socially significant activity for British Asians’ (ibid).

It’s ‘cos they’re all shite mate!
So, why are British Asians excluded from the elite level? According to popular understandings, British Asians lack talent and their ‘Asiannes’ restrains the development of proper football skills. Burdsey gives an example of such popular understandings:

[Daniel Burdsey approaches counter to buy a copy of the weekly British Asian newspaper Eastern Eye]
Newsagent (inquisitively): Eastern Eye?
DB: Yes, it is for my research. I work down the road at the university.
Newsagent: what are you researching?
DB: The under-representation of British Asian professional footballers.
Newsagent (without irony): It’s ‘cos they’re all shite mate! [followed by laughter] (Burdsey 2007: 35)

In his ethnography, Burdsey illustrates that this popular understanding of the exclusion is no reflection of reality. He argues that racial stereotypes, racism, beliefs of British Asians as ‘outsiders’ and mentally and physically incapable of playing the game, shapes their exclusion at the elite level. In other words, dominant discourses and structures facilitate, create, shape and preserve inequalities and disadvantages concerning the position of British Asians at the British elite football level.

Popular understandings of the exclusion
Popular explanations for the exclusion of British Asians at the elite level are focused on notions of talent and notions of suitability. Burdsey outlines that we can understand those explanations in terms of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ (2007: 19). According to popular convictions, British Asians are not represented in the Premier League because their ‘Asian bodies’, their cultural habits and their religion are not suitable for Premier League football (ibid). Those notions are considered as ‘structural factors’ in these ideas. At the same time, notions of ‘agency’ obstruct participation in the highest league.

Popular structural and agency explanations
Allegedly, obstacles regarding participation at the elite level are due to physical, cultural and religious determinants. So, how could we understand this? Understandings and opinions about sports can be traced back to the colonial period (Besnier et al. 2018: 53). The British colonists arrived in South Asia and introduced football as leisure. However, they considered the bodies of the local inhabitants not as strong, masculine, tough and courageous as they considered themselves and the local inhabitants were therefore less capable of playing the game (Burdsey 2007: 21). The ideas of the different bodies therefore shape understandings and perspectives of the world. In other words, ‘the body is the medium through which messages about identity are transmitted’ (Burdsey 2007: 21). ‘Asians’ were simply speaking ‘just too weak’.

Those notions ‘undoubtedly continue to operate as an arena for the articulation of dominant racial ideologies which, due to sport’s inherent power relations, are also reproduced by minority groups’ (Burdsey 2007: 24). Apart from physical characteristics, the culture and religion of British Asians obstruct participation. Popular understandings point out the ‘eating schedule’ and ‘prayer moments in the day’ are deviant concerning the rest of the team and therefore hinder the optimal development of football skills. This popular understanding needs to be problematized because we cannot assume that ‘British Asians’ are a homogeneous group with communal and collective eating patterns and religious practices. However, this is an important aspect of this popular understanding of the exclusion. Burdsey (2007: 72) gives an example of this communal and collective understanding:

‘I had a mixed diet as well and not just Asian food because that’s another stereotype. [People] think that the diet is wrong […]’ (Interview, 11 February 2002)

Let’s now turn towards popular agency-related understandings of the exclusion. Within this discourse, it is the deprioritization of football by British Asian communities and families what obstruct the development of football skills and therefore future participation at the elite level (Burdsey 2007: 74). Allegedly, British Asian parents prefer an educational carrier for their children instead of a football carrier. That is why they will not be supportive and therefore exclude a professional football carrier. British Asians are thus suitable for educational carriers, not for football carriers. Again, these statements need to be problematized in terms of heterogeneity and diversity within the British Asian footballers. In other words, structural and agency related explanations are based on simplistic and essentialist models (Burdsey 2007: 77). As a result, football scouts are not paying attention or search for talented football players among British Asians clubs and this creates a vicious circle.

Performance of ‘British Asianness’ in football
We can conclude that notions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ within the popular understandings are important to understand the exclusion of British Asian footballers in the Premier League. Those notions mark and define the boundaries of British Asians as ‘outsiders’. This is paradoxical because football is celebrated as a colour-blind world where the focus lies on talent, capacity and not on a descent (Carrington 2013: 383). According to Burdsey, it is a complex task for the footballers to break though these explanations because ‘the space where they can best challenge them and prove them to be erroneous- the professional game- remains one which they cannot access’ (2007: 26).

So, how do British Asian footballers react at these dynamics? Burdsey provides a quote of an interview:

‘Looking back I am very thankful that no one asked what it was like being an Asian player. that helped me feel as if I was not under the spotlight, and made me feel very much like one of the lads’ (2007: 68).

The footballers’ identity as ‘Asian’ but at the same time are aware of their ‘Asianness’ as possible ‘threat’ of their carrier. Burdsey analysis this by sketching a dual process: on the one hand, the footballers embrace their Asianness; on the other hand, they ‘deprioritize aspects of their ethnic and cultural identities to gain inclusion as ‘one of the lads’ (2007: 66). He also quotes, in my opinion, an important phrase by Goldberg (1996: 185):

‘Black people are faced with the dilemma that the principal mode of progress and self-elevation open to them is precisely through self-denial, through the effacement, the obliteration, of their blackness. They are predicated, that is, upon the possibility of rendering a significant feature of their self-definition invisible, if not altogether effaced.’

We can understand those dynamics in terms of ‘performance’. Again, I am using the concept of ‘performance’ by Bettie: it ‘refers to agency and a conscious attempt at passing’ (2014:52). British Asian footballers need to perform their ‘identity’ conform to the dominant ideologies concerning British football. They thus have to perform that ‘they absorbed the dominant culture of professional football’ (Burdsey 2007: 69). That is the only way to achieve success in this environment.

Conclusion
Due to stereotyping, ‘professional football is a sphere in which British Asians lack the appropriate ‘cultural passports’, or to use a more appropriate analogy; it is a game in which they are denied an ‘entry ticket” (Burdsey 2007: 71). In popular understandings, British Asians embody structural determinants, regarding the body, eating patterns and religion, and agency related determinants, regarding educational carriers, which obstruct participation at the elite level. In line with Burdsey, I conclude that British Asians have to be aware of their performance of ‘Asianness’ in order to conform to the dominant ideologies. This contains complex dynamics but is the only way to achieve success in the British professional football sphere.

References:

– Besnier, N., S. Brownell & T.F. Carter (2018) The Anthropology of Sport- Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics Oakland, University of California Press
– Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
– Burdsey, D. (2006) British Asians and Football- Culture, Identity, Exclusion Leiden, Taylor & Francis Ltd.
– Carrington, B. (2013). The critical sociology of race and sport: The first fifty years. Annual Review of Sociology 39: 379-398.

NO ONE LIKES US, NO ONE LIKES US, NO ONE LIKES US,
WE DON’T CARE
WE ARE MILLWALL, SUPER MILLWALL
WE ARE MILLWALL FROM THE DEN

Millwall FC is a football club in Bermondsey in London Borough of Southwark. The club is known for their large amount of hooligans and incidents with Millwall-supporters are widely covered by the media. Garry Robson, himself a Millwall-supporter, has done ethnographic research on Millwall-hooligans wherein he tries to understand the myth and reality of Millwall fandom in terms of working-class masculinity, violent ‘neo-fascism’ and subculture (Robson 2002).

The Myth of Millwall
Mainstream media have mostly focused on riots, destructions and inappropriate behaviour of Millwall-supporters. Media, according to Paul Rock (1973), derives its characteristics mainly from the sources, contents and contexts of its own productions which he defines as ‘eternal recurrence’. If we apply this principle on Millwall-supporters, the media represents them as boorish, violent thugs and because of eternal recurrence, ‘Millwall had become synonymous with everything that was bad in football and society’ (Robson 2000: 33). This created a myth of Millwall (archetype), what defines the Millwall-supporter as ‘a darkling urban iconography in which danger lurks around every corner; and the association of a legendary toughness and capacity for violence with particular occupational and cultural groupings such as dockers and gangsters‘ (Robson 2002: 23).

Millwall-supporters, therefore, carry a heavy mythological and symbolic burden (Robson 2002: 33). Even though the club and its supporters try to reconstruct the archetype of Millwall in their fanzine ‘The Lion Roars’, Millwall-supporters remain representatives of counter-bourgeois subjectivity and experiences defined as invalid and transgressive of the metropolitan, normative and liberal-individualist British public sphere.

The Millwall- archetype creates feelings of frustration and resistance among Millwall-supporters. This is reflected in the anthem ‘No one likes us’. The archetype of the Millwall-supporter is ‘a complex interplay of culture and representation […] and his reputation always precedes him, and an awareness of this special, iconic status’ (Robson 2002: 35). The public discourse is therefore a central aspect in constructing and performing notions of ‘the self’ and ‘the collective’. Labelling Millwall-supporters as hooligans, without regarding those processes, is a shallow analysis and thus inaccurate.

Millwall embodied
In line with Robson, I understand ‘extreme’ Millwall-supporters as groups of working-class (mostly) men whose expressions, characteristics and practices are performances of specific patterns of culture and feeling. We have to understand those patterns in terms of locality (south-east London), and masculine, working-class backgrounds.

Millwall FC is founded in south-east London which is continuously associated with disreputability and criminality (Robson 2002: 43). Working-class boys grow up with the assumption that they have to represent themselves as tougher, stronger and more masculine than others because they cannot distinguish themselves regarding materiality. The habitus of boys and men, ‘the product of dispositions of both structural conditions in which people find themselves, and their agency, that is manifested in bodily action’ (Besnier 2018: 97-98), involves violence, hate towards the police and bourgeoisie, and crime (Robson 2002: 47). Those ‘masculine’ practices and sentiments structure the social sphere wherein Millwall-supporters both perform (Robson 2002: 59). This makes ‘Millwallism’ a form of class affiliation and also a specific and embodied form of cultural capital. Therefore, I understand the performance of ‘Millwallism’, based on Bettie’s (2014) thoughts, as a dynamic process of intentional practices and repeated practices constructed in social structures.

Furthermore, it is important to recognize the role of the body in the performance of Millwallism. Robson (2002: 70) argues:
‘The body is a primary site of social memory and cultural reproduction. […] First, the dynamics of urban-masculine personality formation and sociality; second, the significant characteristics of their environment/cultural context related to the idea of “community”; and third, the fusion of these into class-specific forms of bodily culture and social consciousness’.
Those elements ‘inscribe social consciousness, meaning and identity in the body itself’ (Robson 2002: 72). These dynamics become part of the performance of ‘Millwallism’ in the public sphere. We can notice this in the way the supporters walk, dress, participate in riots or sing the anthems. The body is thus an important aspect in performing the ‘Millwall identity’.

In conclusion, Millwallism is about the ‘the celebration, maintenance and protection of local culture and character’ (Robson 2002: 157). The performance of Millwallism is based on mutual characteristics regarding south-east London, working-class backgrounds, masculinity and anti-bourgeois segment. This makes Millwall FC a repository of subcultural values and traditions, but also a site of cultural conflict.

References:
– Besnier, N., S. Brownell & T.F. Carter (2018) The Anthropology of Sport- Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics Oakland, University of California Press
– Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
– Robson, G. (2002) No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care- The Myth and Reality of Millwall Fandom New-York, Berg.

The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The body says: I am a fiesta.
~Eduardo Galeano

The first lecture of Anthropology of the Body course ended with this quote by Eduardo Galeano. While reading this, the third line reminded me of a great article written by Paul Silverstein named ‘Sporting Faith: Islam, Soccer, and the French Nation-State (2000). He examines the practices of the paradoxical alliance between the French nation-state and multinational organisations (mnos) like Nike, Adidas and Reebok, to control Islamic immigrants’ masculinized bodily practices. In this blog, I try to understand how this alliance plays a role in the construction of football identities among Islamic youth in the banlieues in France and how they perform this identity as a global youth culture.

Islam and the French nation-state
Islamic bodily adornment is a subject of debate in France and other countries in Europe. Policymakers and the media debate about how to interpret bodily adornments like headscarves and the burqua: is it ‘an “ostentatious” or “demanding” (and therefore “threatening”) symbol — or a “private” sign of individual religious belonging’ (Silverstein 2000: 26). With the increase of the right-wing ideologies in policies in France, those bodily adornments are framed as disintegrated and opposites of the secular French nation-state and citizenship and are therefore a threat to the society. In this discourse, the body of Islamic citizens is understood ‘to stand in for the transcendental individual subject, and the subject for the society as a whole’ (Silverstein 2000: 27). Therefore, the French government wants to control the bodies of Islamic citizens to aim for integration and secularisation.

One of the government projects to realize those goals are the build of several sports facilities and complex’ for Islamic immigrant youth in the banlieues. So in the 1990’s a lot of football courts and basketball fields were build to entertain Islamic youth and to prevent violence and riots. Those were not the only aims, the projects also focused on keeping away Islamic youth from (extremist) religious and communitarian organisations. Sports, in this case, are used as a ‘privileged remedy for contemporary social dysfunction’ (Silverstein 2000: 34) to construct new moral subjects which embrace secular and therefore French attitudes, like cooperation, fair play, strong work ethic and also individualism and capitalism. ‘Football, in this discourse, is a symbol of France’s “republican” ideology of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” of individualism, democracy, and solidarity^‘(Silverstein 2000:36).

Paradoxical alliance
Those government projects were noticed by big multinational organisations like Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Like the French government, the mnos appropriate the bodies and bodily adornment of Islamic youth. For example, a poster in metro stations in Paris shows the Paris Saint Germain football team with the slogan ‘ “Il n’y a pas qu’un Dieu; il y’en a onze” (There is not but one God; there are eleven)’ (Silverstein 2000: 35). On the poster, the ethnic diverse PSG is framed as ‘a team entity rather than individual players, thus seeming to reiterate the organic solidarity deemed necessary for victory in both the spheres of football and society in general’ (Silverstein 2000: 36). Nike’s advertisement is in line with the discourse of the French government; both have opposed Islam to the French society. However, it is incorrect to state that the interests of the governments and the mnos are the same. The mnos sell Paris Saint-Germain as a whole, so sportswear included. In this way, Nike, Adidas or Reebok, transform a conflictual discourse about nationalism and subnational identity — about Islam in France — into a global aesthetic to be written — in the form of PSG jerseys — on (male) immigrant bodies’ (Silverstein 2000: 38).

From Muslim towards world citizen
Despite the effort the nation-state and the mnos put in, the desired integration in the national and global spheres was not fully realized. The banlieuesards were aware of the duplicity in the policies and therefore they often destroyed sports facilities (Silverstein 2000: 43). However, there was not only violent resistance; some juveniles made use of the facilities, but they gave it their own twist. The youth appropriated the sports facilities in the public sphere for their own rules and games, which some policymakers defined as ‘ghetto sports’. More important, ‘the appropriation of public sports spaces involves the demarcation of categories of belonging and local identity’ (Silverstein 2000: 43). Islamic immigrants protect the sport facilities and are hostile against outsiders. Furthermore, the juveniles used the facilities for ethnic or religious purposes which the government tried to prevent, for example the teams were decided by ethnic background or Islamic organisations incorporated the facilities in their practices to foster loyalty for religious or political purposes (Silverstein 2000: 44).
So how about the sportswear the mnos try to promote? According to Silverstein (2000: 45) the clothing style of those juveniles is sportswear. He analyses this by quoting Dick Hebdige (1979) ‘le look Beure (the beur look) borrows from mainstream consumerism and a generalized global youth culture, allying its wearers with contemporary American inner-city gangsters and marking their separation from — if not outright “hate” (haine) for- a republican system that they condemn (in speeches, graffiti, and rap lyrics) as repressive and racist’ (2000: 45). In fact, Islamic youth perform resistance against the French nation-state by wearing sports clothes. We can conclude that the government attempts to control the bodily adornments from Islamic youth in the banlieues have created new forms of belonging at subnational level and the level of global youth culture.

Performance
The overall topic of my blogs is ‘performance of football identity’. How can we understand the case-study by Paul Silverstein in terms of performance? I like to use theories of Bettie (2014) who explains class ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ based on the thoughts of Judith Butler. Bettie (2014: 52) states that there is no such thing as ‘an identity’ or ‘a self’: she states that the self or identity is not natural, it is always constructed and performed. The performance is the identity. However, people have a sense of identity that is fixed and static. Betties explains by stating that constructed identities are institutionalized; there is a fixed element of identity what makes people think they have a fixed ‘identity’ (Bettie 2014: 53).
Bettie distinguishes ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’. Performance, according to Bettie, ‘refers to agency and a conscious attempt at passing’ (2014:52) and performativity ‘on the other hand, refers to the fact that class subjects are the effects of the social structure of class inequality, caught in unconscious displays of cultural capital that are a consequence of class origin or habitus’ (ibid). Identity is never performed or performative; it is always a dual process.

So performance is about agency and performativity about structure and both are important to understand ‘identity’. Now I would like to apply those thoughts on the football identities of Islamic youth in France. Islamic immigrants actively express and therefore perform new categories of belonging and subnational identity in reaction to the government and commercial practices. They oppose against a discourse which portrays them as communitarian, threatening and therefore disintegrated. This discourse frames and constructs ‘the Islamic immigrant’ and has therefore performative influences on identity processes. Both processes come together in Islamic bodily adornments; the sportswear. Islamic youth become, by wearing sportswear, part of a broader, global youth culture which resists mainstream, republican ideologies. The ‘football identity’ of Islamic youth is thus a performance of categories of belonging on local, national and global level and an expression of resistance against mainstream, secular and republic ideologies.

References:

• Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
• Silverstein, P. (2000) ‘Sporting Faith: Islam, Soccer, and the French Nation-State’ Social Text, 18(4), 25-53.

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.