FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

ANTROPOLOGICHESKIJ FORUM
RUS | ENG

Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 32

 

A Review of MARIANN VACZI, SOCCER, CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN SPAIN: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF BASQUE FANDOM. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2015, 231 pp.

Julia Amatuni

European University at St Petersburg
3 Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
jamatuni()gmail.com

Abstract: This review discusses a monograph by an anthropologist Mariann Vaczi. The book focuses primarily on the Basque football club Athletic Bilbao, commonly known for its particular recruiting philosophy. According to this philosophy, a football player can only become a part of the Athletic’s team if he either was born in the Basque Country or started his professional career in Athletic’s football school. The existence of such a recruitment approach in modern football makes the Athletic an interesting angle from which to examine the issues of local and national identities, gender, lifecycle rituals, and mortuary practices in the football tradition of Spain and Bilbao. Although Vaczi uses a broad range of material and provides careful analysis of the aforementioned issues, Vaczi fails to recognise more general patterns of football fandom specific not just to Athletic nor Basques. Nevertheless the subject and the main ideas of the book are topical and might be of interest to academics from different fields of social science.

Keywords: anthropology, ethnography, Basque studies, Spain, football.

To cite: Amatuni J., 'A Review of Mariann Vaczi, Soccer, Culture and Society in Spain: An Ethnography of Basque Fandom. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2015, 231 pp.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 32, pp. 227–238.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/032/amatuni.pdf