British Football & Social Exclusion

This book takes stock of British football at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is written by a range of concerned academics and writers, all of whom have an active relationship with the contemporary football world. The book assesses the changes that have occurred in many areas of football culture and the political and academic debates that have accompanied these changes. English football in particular, it seems, is 'fat city'. The Premiership, now eight years old, has, via satellite television, become a globalised phenomenon: there are Liverpool supporters in Bangladesh, Chelsea fans in sub-Saharan Africa and Manchester United followers across the globe. Grounds are full. Top class football attracts people to bars and pubs in huge numbers. Hooliganism appears a thing of the past. Everyone seems to love football and/or to support a team. The British football media are generally euphoric in their rendering of contemporary football culture. However, the contributors to this book argue that the heavily commodified, PR-driven and cartelised British football world, with which so many contemporary politicians and other public figures rush to identify themselves, has either created, exacerbated or continued to ignore serious problems of social exclusion problems of class and community, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age.

Stephen Wagg

Dedication, Acknowledgements, Series editor's foreword, Introduction, Notes on contributors, 1. Fat city? British football and the politics of social exclusion at the turn of the twenty-first century, 2. 'You're not welcome anymore': the football crowd, class and social exclusion, 3. 'Giving something back': can football clubs and their communities co-exist?, 4. A day out with the 'old boys', 5. 'With his money, I could afford to be depressed': markets, masculinity and mental distress in the English football press, 6. Still a man's game? Women footballers, personal experience and tabloid myth, 7. Out on the field: women's experiences of gender and sexuality in football, 8. Talking to me? Televised football and masculine style, 9. 'Play the white man': identifying institutional racism in professional football, 10. Football and social responsibility in the 'new' Scotland: the case of Celtic FC, 11. Football for children or children for football? A contemporary boys' league and the politics of childhood, 12. Pick the best, forget the rest? Training field dilemmas and children's football at the turn of the century, Select bibliography, Index