Fun footbal communities in Northern England (UK): rituals, identity, mobilization

Abstract (English)

The paper presents the results of a historical and anthropological study of the discourse of English identity based on sports in the North of England. How do football and fan culture ritualise community and present identity? What is the quality and nature of the affective fan community? How does this relate to issues of locality, nation and race? Sport is seen as a symbolic territory of a “meeting” of culture, competition and conformism, as a platform for discussing aspects of community life, a way of group solidarity and mobilisation of the population, as a place for the development of various political and cultural ideologies. The study is based on the author’s fieldwork from 2010–20120, 2023–2024.
Sports culture and collective sports history are in many ways a substitute for other unifying factors for the North. Sport creates a context in which a blurred and urbanised identity comes to a new incarnation by appealing to a sense of locality, place and belonging as soon as fans cross the stadium turnstile. At the stadium, the local culture and local identity of the majority can be ritually defined despite changes in the immediate environment and migration patterns. At the same time, the fan culture of minorities often adheres to specific norms, being in some sense alternative.
The paper will examine in detail the case of the Bangla Bantams sports fan organization of Bangladeshi origin in the northern English former industrial but now extremely multicultural city of Bradford and its influence on local integration processes.