It is argued by different social researchers that the Western contemporaneous world is living under a different set of conditions than in the one that classical sociologist’s theorised. Taking a reflexive modern perspective through a cosmopolitan sociological imagination this thesis discussed how a particular socio-cultural manifestation was used discursively by individuals to understand their being and becoming in a globalised world. As argued in this thesis, football’s transnationalism provided supporters a locus for creating and expressing cosmopolitan identities that challenge the modern sociological imagination, particularly the one centred in the nation-state. My understanding of the modern sociological imagination impact on football fandom theorisations emerges from a critical analysis of the academic discourse on authentic supporters. As demonstrated in the thesis, the authentic supporter under a modern sociology is imagined as homogeneously male, white, working class, and especially local. Thus, based on an 18-month ethnographic inspired research on Liverpool FC’s supporters in Brazil and Switzerland the argument that emerges from this empirical research is fourfold: the cosmopolitan football flâneur should be conceptualised ambivalently governed by individualisation; instead of a Bastelbiographie, individualisation should be understood as a Dasein-für-Gewälthe-Andere, where those others are the re-modernised structures of modernity; cosmopolitanism does not render the nation-state obsolete as a Zombie-category, whereas it should be imagined as Frankensteins-monster; and Ulrich Beck’s notions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism should be understood as more real than real simulacras.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:665934 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Petersen-Wagner, Renan |
| Publisher | Durham University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11235/ |
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