Cultures of Memory in Football Fanzines. A Content Analysis
©2014
Textbook
81 Pages
Summary
The increasing insecurity in the English society is countered by a resurgence of nostalgia and remembering the old times. This phenomenon can be found in football, too, but it differs from the need for nostalgia that is visible in society. High Street shops like Past Times are hugely successful in selling commodities that remember the English Commonwealth with goods from the countries that once belonged to it. Also, this becomes visible by the many replica items of daily life that are designed in a retro style but contain modern technology such as radios, watches, alarm clocks and furniture. Football fans can purchase replica shirts of their favourite club from the seventies and even earlier.In the field of football, the introduction of the Premier League in England has changed the face of football massively. After the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters football fans got active themselves and started to publish football fanzines. In these outlets they mostly opposed the view that every football fan is a hooligan. They also used football fanzines as a platform to remember their heroes and glories of eras long gone. For this reason cultures of memory did become a part of football fanzines and did so very vivid.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
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1. Introduction
The aim of this study is to show to what extent cultures of memory are important
parts of the content of football fanzines and how they are exercised. It will also be
discussed why these cultures of memory are an important part in the fanzines and for
the people involved in the production of fanzines. The literature review in chapter one
highlights the strength and weaknesses of written accounts on football fanzines and also
examines concepts of memory that deliver an explanation for the use of cultures of
memory in football fanzines. These include theories by Maurice Halbwachs who is
acknowledged as the founding father of the field of collective memory. Pierre Nora
takes this idea and adapts it to the collective memory of a nation, here France. Aby
Warburg investigated how in Western European countries a pictorial memory has been
developed over the course of the last 500 years through which pictures and images from
the ancient past are recycled.
The sociological perspectives that will be presented here are used to give
possible explanations about why there are cultures of memory in the content of football
fanzines. Norbert Elias work on established and outsider relationships will be used to
explain why football fans separate themselves from ordinary spectators in football
stadia. He further looked at power relationships in this context. Also, the idea of a
civilizing process is looked at and explained if such a thing had taken place among
football fans to become producers and editors of football fanzines.
Throughout the work the history of football fanzines will be highlighted. This
has partially been done by some writers mentioned in the literature review. These
accounts examine the history of the fanzines until the mid-1990s. English football saw
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massive changes in the 1990s in the wake of the Taylor Report (1990) and with the
introduction of the Premier League in 1992. Therefore the fanzines not only offered a
platform for discussion of what has changed for them, but also the editors took the time
to remember the favourite players of the supporters, their views of the past and to
publish their opinion on club issues as well as footballing ones, that means match
reports and a critical judgement of the players' performance by the writers. In most of
the literature mentioned in chapter one the 1990's are described as the heydays of
football fanzines. Something that Boyle and Haynes describe as harking back to a more
secure, less complex society (2000:202). In their point of view the fans themselves
become historians of the game and their club.
The third chapter introduces the methods applied to the dissertation to find out
about the presence of cultures of memory. This is done by way of a content analysis. All
relevant categories of memory are presented here and were sought for in the content of
the fanzines examined. These will be found in Appendix 1. The results from this chapter
will be found in Appendix 2. There is a table which lists all fanzines examined and all
categories of memory combined and it will be shown if these categories are part of the
content of football fanzines or not.
Chapter four is dedicated to the explanations for the findings from the preceding
chapter. As the sample for the study is split into two, one part examining the 1990s the
other fanzines from 2000 onwards we can draw conclusions about the development of
football fanzines since the mid-1990s. Therefore, the history of fanzines is continued in
this chapter, although this dissertation does not intend to give a chapter on the history of
3
football fanzines. But to split the sample and examine the fanzines proved useful to
outline the history of fanzines in the time period examined.
Chapter five brings a discussion about whether or not the theoretical framework
can be approved of or if the theories outlined are not useful and if football fanzines do
not contain cultures of memory at all. In any case it is analyzed why that is and what
possible conclusions can be drawn from it for the further exploration of football
fanzines and cultures of memory.
In the appendices there is a list of fanzines as well as a table that shows the
results of the content analysis
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2. Literature review
There is a canon of literature dealing with the development of football, its
commercialization and football hooliganism while there is only a small amount of
writing about football fanzines. The literature dealing with football fanzines will be
introduced here and examined for its strength and weaknesses. Further, theories on
memory will be highlighted as well as sociological theories will be scrutinized for the
purpose of this dissertation.
2.1. Literature on Fans and Fanzines
The topic of football fanzines has not been explored extensively, but nonetheless
there is a reasonable amount of writing that deals with football fanzines, most of it was
written in the early or mid 1990s. At that time football fanzines were mushrooming
across the UK and as a new phenomenon attracted attention from scholars. Sufficient
accounts on the emergence of football fanzines are given by Jary et al. (1991), Duke
(1991), Boyle (1994), Brown (1994), Haynes (1995), Giulianotti (1997,1999) and
Dunning (1999).
Haynes' (1995) account on football fanzines has explored the topic most
intensively to date. He describes the history of football fanzines from the roots until the
mid-1990s. The first fanzines produced were edited by music fans who wrote about
punk rock and punk culture in the late 1970 and early 1980s. Although some fanzines
were published before When Saturday Comes (further: WSC) it was only with the
emergence of WSC in 1986 that the fanzine scene kick-started and developed (Haynes:
55). The English national fanzine
WSC started as an off-shoot of the punk fanzine
5
Sniffin' Glue (Haynes: 39), and was distributed as a "...page supplement to Cardigan
, a
short-lived magazine..." (Haynes: 69). It is important for Haynes to stress the idea that
the voice of independent reporting about football opposes the main stream view
perpetuated by the media and the government. Haynes argues against the wide spread
belief that every football supporter was automatically a hooligan and thus sees the
fanzines as a reaction by fans to this attitude. Fans' reporting on football was necessary
to help express alternative views about the game which differed from the perspective
supported and perpetuated by the main stream media. Haynes writes about football
fanzines as a culture of defence, as an opposition to the mainstream media and opinion
makers and an expression of dissatisfaction with the media-saturated sport and simply
to show that football fans are not all hooligans. The tools for this culture to be
established were and still are fanzines and independent supporter groups such as the
Football Supporters Association (FSA). Haynes gives a good insight into the history of
the development of the fanzine scene in England and Scotland by outlining the history
of WSC and Off The Ball
(OTB), the Scottish equivalent to WSC. Also, Haynes
sketches the development of the subculture that surrounds fanzines and the fan scene in
terms of distribution and support. For example the sharing of articles between fanzines
was common among fanzine editors showing that a sense of community was
establishing with the editors and writers of different fanzines. The shortcoming of this
book is that it does not state who the actual writers of football fanzines are, to which
social class they belong to and what their educational background is. Roderick (1996) is
right to address this failure in his review of Haynes, but then this is to be said of nearly
every account on fanzines apart from Giulianotti (1999). Nonetheless, Haynes' book is
a very useful source for the history of fanzines and the culture that evolved around it,
written at a time when fanzines in football were something new and fashionable.
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In the opening chapter, Haynes analyzes Marxist theories and Figurationalist
theories in terms of explanations of football hooliganism in citing Taylor (1971) and
Dunning (1988) for suitable explanations on the topic of hooliganism. Taylor produces
a "romanticised view on the past" (Taylor cited in: Haynes:5) in writing about a
"participatory democracy" (Taylor:143) that football fans establish with their local
team; meaning that they can tell managers and coaches where to find a talented player
and help to raise money for the club. Thus, the involvement of supporters was much
higher. Only through professionalization and bourgeoisification of the game this
democracy became obsolete (Taylor:145). The influence the fans and supporters had
before the Second World War was much bigger than it was after and especially the
1960s and 1970s saw a massive change in the ruling of football clubs and the full
establishment of professionalism that consequently led to football hooliganism,
according to Taylor. This approach is opposed by what Haynes calls the "Leicester
School of Thought" (Haynes:12). He gives an analogy of the rise of the school and
names its publications to date that deal with hooliganism but falls short in outlining the
theory the members of the Leicester school adhere to. Rather he describes the scholars
working there as strictly adhering to Norbert Elias' theory of civilizing processes and
defending this approach against criticism from the outside. Although it seems that
Haynes does not warm to these two theoretical frameworks, he nevertheless delivers a
fruitful insight into the development of football fanzines, the distribution of fanzines,
issues concerning the content and commercialization of football fanzines and the topic
of full-time employment of the editors.
In their article about fanzines Jary et al. (1991:582) postulate that sport is a field
that can easily be "...utilized as a vehicle in the exercise of hegemony..." because it is
7
less alien than "'high culture'". The link between sport and politics is well documented
in the literature but this dissertation does not focus on sports and politics. It is mainly
the Olympic Games that offer a great stage for the expression of political thoughts or for
the use as a political stage. The most famous examples are the Games held in Berlin
1936 or the Black Power salute by Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Games in
Mexico City. Since the end of WWII no Olympic event went by without any political
connotation. Vinnai (1972) explores topics such as sport and the military and the
political conscience of students of sport. In East Germany, and probably throughout
Eastern Europe, sport was used to underline the idea that communism was supposed to
be the better way of living and which produced Olympic medal winners and world
champions. For example, it is now proven that East Germany ran a sports programme
that was only rivalled by the former Soviet Union which might help to underline this
point.
Therefore, Jary et al. follow a tradition among Marxist writers that sport is a
political tool in stating that football fanzines can be used as a platform for resistance.
This is exactly where they place the fanzine movement into, a form of politically
motivated resistance against a bias from the national media and the government.
Fanzines are thus a possibility to publish opinions that would otherwise go unheard
either by neglecting or repression through the media and the clubs. Jary et al. describe
the same phenomenon as Haynes but subscribe the fanzines into a political role as the
authors postulate that the fanzines are supposed to work as a way of `cultural
contestation' against the main stream (Jary et al. 1991:581). The authors further deliver
chapters on the general content of fanzines, look at the producers and how fanzines
together with the FSA form a successful pressure group within the football industry.
8
There are two conclusions in this article, a) fanzines in fact are a case of successful
contestation in and through sport and the authors point out that fanzines not only in
sports are a form of successful contestation and b) they bring implications for football
research, demanding to widen the focus of football research and not only to focus on
football hooliganism. That is an ambitious request and is certainly correct, but as the
1970s and 1980s saw hooliganism as the main problem in British football it is only
logical that most attention is brought towards a sufficient explanation of the problem
and to deliver possible solutions. The authors deliver a critique on the Leicester Centre
for Football Research in complaining about the focus being too narrowly focused on
football hooliganism. Further, Jary et. al. they denounce the Centre as being too close to
policy making. That is because the Centre is dependent on public funding. (Jary et.
al:593). This polemic adds a bitter aftertaste to the article which is well written and
therefore it is a very useful account on the possibilities of cultural contestation done by
fanzines.
Duke (1991) again as Jary et. al. have done, expresses the need of an alternative
sociology of football that goes beyond the issue of hooliganism, but again as was the
case with Jary et.al. hooliganism was the main topic of the 1980s and thus had all the
attention. Duke therefore suggests a number of topics that seem to be interesting for
him. These include the modernization of football grounds in Britain in consequence of
the Taylor Report (1990), fanzines, comparative research and social demography. Apart
from these demands what makes this article helpful is a list of fanzines of English and
Welsh (Cardiff and Swansea) fanzines. The paucity of information, including the
absence of a list of Scottish fanzines, is perhaps unfortunate.
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Giulianotti's (1997) article about fanzines related to Aberdeen FC in Scotland
highlights the Scottish perspective on football fanzines. What attracts attention is the
fact that the emergence of football fanzines in England and Scotland has the same
causes and roots. Both scenes developed in the mid 1980s after the biggest tragedies in
British football, Heysel and Bradford in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989. This
constitutes an interesting fact as the cause for these tragedies was specifically English,
yet the reaction to these causes affected the whole of Britain. Therefore the development
of fanzines is connected to national as well as local causes. Further, Giulianotti gives an
insight into the local culture of Aberdeen and the role of fanzines attached to the club
within it. This example shows how football fanzines can act on a local stage and allows
conclusions for clubs and cities similar to Aberdeen. Although the producers of fanzines
exercise a certain power in the field of football, according to Giulianotti they are well
aware of their powerlessness compared to the club, the players and authorities and
"...yet are still laden with an explicit humour, irony and invective about their own
identities..." (p. 214). He contradicts himself in terms of power later when he highlights
the role of fanzines in the sacking of two managers of the club in the early 1990s. The
article is therefore useful only in cases similar to Aberdeen, a city with one club, which
has seen better times and a media biased negatively towards fans and supporters.
Another account on Scottish football, this time on Celtic FC is delivered by
Boyle (1994). He follows questions as to what extent football clubs as cultural
institutions are important for shaping specific identities and how this "...process is
being shaped by wider cultural agendas that enjoy prominence within local regional or
national spaces..." (p. 74). In another article that concentrates on several clubs, here
Manchester United FC, Arsenal FC and West Ham United FC, Brown (1998) examines
10
the power and influence fans achieved in the mid and late 1980s. He raises questions of
regulation and control, but also of participation and exclusion that followed the Taylor
Report of 1990 (1990). Further, he mentions the FSA and the NFFSC (National
Federation of Football Supporters Clubs) as the two main supporters associations and
fanzines to gain control and influence in the game. Although the focus is not primarily
put on fanzines, Brown includes them into this article as an important part of fan culture
and fan democracy.
Dunning (1999, p.125-6; 135) mentions football fanzines only shortly in the
context in the commercialization of football and does not deliver any explanations on
the topic itself, rather his focus is on the development of sport and its sociology. He
produces a critique of Haynes in which he criticizes him for failing to examine the
social backgrounds of the fanzine writers. For Dunning the fanzines are part of what he
calls the "football figuration" (p.126), thus they have an influence and power, though
only to a small extent and they are part of the football industry (p.126). A deeper
examination into football fanzines is delivered by Giulianotti (1999) who describes the
background of the people involved in writing football fanzines and gives a historical
paragraph about the circumstances that led to the emergence of football fanzines in the
UK, but he does not specify his thoughts any clearer. He links them to trends in social
history that are rooted in the 1960s. Further, Giulianotti identifies fanzine writers as
white-collar workers who tend to have a university degree.
Boyle and Haynes (2000) deliver a book on sport being part of popular culture
which is influenced by the media and vice versa. The authors deliver a history of the
media-sport relationship emphasizing the time from 1989 to 1998 as the decade that
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brought the most dramatic changes in sports coverage in the media. The book does not
focus solely on televised sports but also covers the development of sport in newspaper
journalism including the internet although at the time of writing the internet has not had
its widespread influence that it enjoys now. Here, Boyle and Haynes start an outlook
into the future of sport broadcasting on the internet. In this respect they place football
fanzines as a representation of British football fans and describe the media perception of
fans which has changed significantly since the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 (Boyle,
Haynes, 2000:198). They also describe football fans as historians which is suitable as a
description.
Two studies, one English, one German (Robson, 2000; Schmidt-Lauber, 2004)
that focus on a particular club. The English club is Millwall FC, the German is
Hamburg-based St. Pauli FC. Both deliver an insight into fan groups from both clubs
and how each group of fans identify themselves in relation to their club. Both studies
examine the strong local ties that the clubs have to their geographic locality as well as
investigate how groups of fans mainly recruit other fans from other areas of the towns
the clubs are located in. Both focus on the myth that surrounds each club making these
clubs particular and thus worth studying. The myth of Millwall FC constitutes itself
from the reputation of Millwall being the club of the dock workers. The myth is built
around images of masculinity and hard ship based on the life in the Docklands of East
London. Even comparisons to the London of Charles Dickens were made and seemed to
be appropriate (Robson:23). The image of Millwall supporters is that of being
hooligans. Robson produces a number of quotations from other fanzines to underline
this perception. The quotes in these fanzines refer to the supporters of the club as being
savage, nasty and malicious (Nottingham Forest's
Forest Forever). The Arsenal fanzine
12
The Gooner hopes that Arsenal supporters returning back safely in one piece after an
FA-Cup match against Millwall (Robson:22).
Robson followed Millwall FC over the time of two seasons (1995/6 and 1996/7)
and conducted an ethnographical research about the fans and supporters of the club. He
coins the term `millwallism' to underline the particularity of the club; and under this
topic Robson conducts research into locality of the club and the habitus of the fans. He
discovers strong local ties between the club and the area where it is located, South-East
London. Whereas Robson followed the club personally and thus did the field work on
his own, Schmidt-Lauber initiated a study group focused on the Hamburg-based
football club St. Pauli FC. In both cases the involvement and detachment of the
researchers is a factor to be paid attention to when looking at the concluded results.
Schmidt-Lauber states in order to prevent too much involvement during field research
whenever the group of researchers attended a game (away or at home), one person was
randomly picked to supervise the others to ensure the observations did not become too
subjective. The book of Schmidt-Lauber covers topics such as the construction of the
media image of the club, the politically correct fan and the question of what makes a
true fan. For the club and more importantly for the fans the image that should be created
and uphold is that of an underdog. Compared to the `big' club in Hamburg Hamburger
SV, St. Pauli FC is certainly an underdog in sporting terms; but rather underdog is
meant here to establish the image of the only club in Germany with supporters who are
entirely left orientated. Also, the nickname of the club "Freibeuter der Liga" translated
from German would describe the team as pirates of the league. Together with a pirate
flag it seems the work on the image is fairly progressed. The image of pirates was
established in the 1980s when Hamburg hosted an alternative community which entirely
13
supported the club. Although this community does not exist any longer due to
redevelopment in the dock area of Hamburg, the image created at that time is
maintained until recent days.
But, as Schmidt (2004) conducts, does marketing and the image attributed to St.
Pauli FC not imply a contradiction? The image of an underdog used to promote the club
without estranging the supporters who are mainly recruited from outside the main
stream culture? As the study continues it becomes clear that the club followed a
sophisticated strategy using words that would describe the club best. These were fierce,
rebellious, self-deprecating, cosmopolitan and provocative. Therefore, the myth and the
media image of St. Pauli FC do not contradict but support each other (Schmidt,
2004:172).
Included into the study is a chapter on political football fans. The book further
deals with a description of what is a true fan, particularly being a fan of St. Pauli FC.
For both clubs the locality is of importance. For Millwall it is "the land that time forgot"
(Robson, p.19), that is, South-East London and in particular the former Docklands of
London and for St. Pauli it is the Reeperbahn and the surrounding estate, the red light
district in Hamburg.
The attempt to establish ties with the surrounding neighbourhood can be
attributed to every club. The relationship between football fans and football clubs has
most extensively been researched by Bale (1982, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2003).
Bale explores the stadium as a sacred place, as a scenic space, as home and as a tourist
place (Bale, 1991:131-134). The emphasis in Bale's writing is on the stadium that
14
combines people in either religious fulfilment in which case the stadium is a substitute
for the cathedral or as a place that fans consider their homes. The German tennis player
Boris Becker once referred to the centre court at Wimbledon as his living room. This
highlights that not only for football fans but also for athletes sports grounds have a
meaning that goes beyond the meaning sports grounds are originally designed for:
sporting events.
A theoretical point of view on football fandom is given by Redhead (1997).
Post-fandom and fan culture are his main points of research into which he has
conducted a study. He mainly draws his theories from cultural studies to describe the
transformation of football culture. Completely without mentioning football Harris
(1998) edited a study that focuses on fans and draws possible theories and conclusions
from the chapters.
Harris (1998) discovers that research on fandom is a relatively new topic not
only within sociology. The book follows questions such as what produces fandom and
what specific practices are associated with it and what role fans play in social and
cultural processes to underline the fact that fans and fandom is not sufficiently explored
as an academic topic yet. In the introduction she asks how an audience is constituted by
saying that these in and of themselves do not exist anywhere, that audiences and fans
are fluid, mutable, dynamic and interactive and that they do not hold still (Harris:3).
Although the word fan and its connotation are well known within society it is surprising
that fans and fandom are "profoundly untheorized" (Harris:4). Harris mentions
Bourdieu and deCerteau as sources to explain fans and the special relationship between
hierarchies of power and alternative uses of cultural resources which provide a basis for
15
discussing fandom (Harris:5). Unfortunately there are no accounts on sports or football
fans, mostly the books focuses on television fans, therefore any theory deducted from
the articles are hardly suitable for any explanation on football fans.
Weighing up all kinds of audiences, including football audiences and fans
equally, Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) deliver a range of explanations for
audiences and fans. They classify three types of audiences: the simple audience, the
mass audience and the diffused audience; the first one being that of attending a football
match, a rock concert, theatre plays, films and festivals. Mass audiences are created
through the help of the mass media while being a member of a diffused audience means
that attending any form of performance is constitutive for everyday life. That means that
for many people it is music that is constantly playing in the background or the television
running without being noticed at all, but only for the noise of it to be there. Thus, any
performance has become a "background noise" (p.69). In contrast to that, simple
audiences such as attending a football match are focused on the performance on the
pitch and events with a simple audience are exceptional (p.44). Although delivering a
chapter on fans, Abercrombie and Longhurst still see sports fans "as misbehaving at a
sports match" (p.122); thus the opinion seems not to have changed. It does not become
clear whether this point of view that football fans behave deviant is the point of view
held by the authors.
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2.2. Literature on Theories
From the theoretical point of view a separation needs to be made in the
literature. The first part will give an overview on the literature about cultures of
memory, while the second part will deal with theories from sociology.
In the field of memory as in every field of scientific research the theories are
varying and opposing. This allows for a fruitful discussion on the topic of memory. The
literature on collective memory is widespread and has its origins in the writings of the
French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (1925, 1950, 1992) but the work only became
popular 40 years after his death in 1945. Nowadays his work is considered as having
laid the foundation for any study carried out in the field of collective memory. For
Halbwachs
"...memory is not given but rather a socially constructed notion...while
the collective memory endures and draws strength from its base in a
coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who
remember.
" (1992: 22).
Halbwachs examines memory in different contexts such as in dreams, language,
and the localization of memory, the collective memory of the family, religious
collective memory and memory of social classes. Starting with dreams, Halbwachs
examined that "no real and complete memory every [sic] appears in our dreams as it
appears in our waking state." (1992:41) Thus, the mind is most removed from society
whilst we are dreaming. That does not mean that dreams are not structured, they simply
appear to make less sense than the daily matters that occupy one's mind, although most
often we can still recall them (1992:44). Further, whenever someone recovers his or her
own past it is not that this happens without a certain expectation. That is in the case of a
Details
- Pages
- Type of Edition
- Erstausgabe
- Year
- 2014
- ISBN (eBook)
- 9783954897612
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783954892617
- File size
- 420 KB
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2014 (April)
- Keywords
- Cultures Football Fanzines
