Global Perspectives on Football in Africa
Football, in many ways, is a visual endeavour. From the visual experience within the stadium itself to worldwide media representations, from advertisements to football art and artefacts: football is much about seeing and being seen, about watching, making visual and being visualised. The FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa turned into a perfect example of the visual dimensions of football. Stadiums were built and marketed as tourist attractions, mass media and internet platforms advertised South African cities and venues, logos and emblems were displayed and celebrated, exhibitions were organised in museums world-wide.
This book explores the social, cultural and political role of football in Africa by focusing on the issue of its visibility and invisibility. The contributions consider the history and present of football in different parts of Africa. They examine historical and recent pictures and images of football and football players, as well as places and spaces of their production and perception. They analyse the visual dimensions expressed in sports infrastructure, football media-scapes, and in expressive and material arts. This book thus contributes to the growing interest in football in Africa by exploring a new field of research into sports.
This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.
Susann Baller is a senior lecturer in African history at the University of Basel. She has published her dissertation on "Playing Fields of the City: Football and Youth Politics in Senegal since the 1950s" (Bhlau 2010) as well as several articles in major academic journals on sports, youth and urban history. She is member of the steering committee of the German African Studies Association.
Giorgio Miescher is currently a Marie Curie research fellow at the Centre for African Studies of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and the Centre for Humanities Research of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He works on a project entitled Empires of the Visual, which looks at the visualisation of imperial space in Southern Africa in the 20th century. Between 1994 and 2011 Giorgio Miescher worked at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Switzerland, as a curator, researcher and lecturer.
Ciraj Rassool is professor of history and director of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. He chairs the board of the District Six Museum and also serves on the boards of Iziko Museums of South Africa the South African History Archive. He is co-author or co-editor of five books about museums, collecting and public culture including Recalling Community in Cape Town: Creating and Curating the District Six Museum (2001), Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (2006) and Popular Snapshots and Tracks to the Past: Cape Town, Nairobi, Lubumbashi (2010).
Global Perspectives on Football in Africa
Visualising the Game
Edited by
Susann Baller, Giorgio Miescher and Ciraj Rassool
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2013 Taylor & Francis
This book is a reproduction of Soccer and Society, vol. 13, issue 2. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN13: 978-0-415-57229-3
Publishers Note
The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book may be referred to as articles as they are identical to the articles published in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.
Series Editor: Boria Majumdar
The social, cultural (including media) and political study of sport is an expanding area of scholarship and related research. While this area has been well served by the Sport in the Global Society series, the surge in quality scholarship over the last few years has necessitated the creation of Sport in the Global Society: Contemporary Perspectives. The series will publish the work of leading scholars in fields as diverse as sociology, cultural studies, media studies, gender studies, cultural geography and history, political science and political economy. If the social and cultural study of sport is to receive the scholarly attention and readership it warrants, a cross-disciplinary series dedicated to taking sport beyond the narrow confines of physical education and sport science academic domains is necessary. Sport in the Global Society: Contemporary Perspectives will answer this need.
Titles in the Series
Australian Sport
Antipodean Waves of Change
Edited by Kristine Toohey and Tracy Taylor
Australias Asian Sporting Context
1920s and 1930s
Edited by Sean Brawley and Nick Guoth
Critical Support for Sport
Bruce Kidd
Disability in the Global Sport Arena
A Sporting Chance
Edited by Jill M. Clair
Diversity and Division Race, Ethnicity and Sport in Australia
Christopher J. Hallinan
Documenting the Beijing Olympics
Edited by D. P. Martinez and Kevin Latham
Fan Culture in European Football and the Left
Edited by Peter Kennedy and David Kennedy
Bearing Light
Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement
John J. MacAloon
Football in Brazil
Edited by Martin Curi
Football Supporters and the Commercialisation of Football
Comparative Responses across Europe
Edited by Peter Kennedy and David Kennedy
Footballs Relationship with Art: The Beautiful Game?
John E. Hughson
Forty Years of Sport and Social Change, 1968-2008
To Remember is to Resist
Edited by Russell Field and Bruce Kidd
Global Perspectives on Football in Africa
Visualising the Game
Edited by Susann Baller, Giorgio Miescher and Raffaele Poli
Global Sport Business
Community Impacts of Commercial Sport
Edited by Hans Westerbeek
Governance, Citizenship and the New European Football Championships
The European Spectacle
Edited by Wolfram Manzenreiter and Georg Spitaler
Indigenous People, Race Relations and Australian Sport
Edited by Christopher J. Hallinan and Barry Judd
Olympic Reform Ten Years Later
Edited by Heather Dichter and Bruce Kidd
Perspectives on Sport and Music
