CfP: “Football as a Social Phenomenon in the Balkans”

The present work is meant to show the way in which football made its appearance in the two SouthEastern European countries. The study of the ancient forms of the game can't offer enough information as to how it evolved in the Balkan area, so this paper concentrates on tracking the way in which football made its way to become one of the main hobbies of youth in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Romania's at the start of the XX century. This article focuses on the way in which football appeared, its evolution, and the shift from amateur to professional level in both countries. The pioneering years of this sport have been rough, due to the reluctance shown by the church and the political class of the time. The two entities saw football as a threat to traditional activities, especially the religious leaders, who considered that the sport will drive young people away from the church.

Comparative Southeast European Studies

The dissolution of the Yugoslav state went hand in hand with an increasing ethnicization of political and social life for the citizens. This development can be reconstructed, as if through a magnifying glass, in the sport of football and its fans' shifting loyalties to clubs and national teams. The process led to a transformation and regrouping of fan communities along ethnic lines, particularly in ethnically mixed Bosnia and Herzegovina. The politicization of football in Bosnia and Herzegovina is illustrated here primarily from the Bosnian-Serb perspective. The subject also raises an issue concerning the relationship between politics and sports. Is it politics that has so decisively influenced and shaped the subculture of football in the past 25 years? Or does this subculture play the role of a vanguard, in which certain developments during times of change become visible at an earlier stage than in the society at large? A current trend in Bosnian and Herzegovinian football is also noteworthy, in which a softening of the principle of strict ethnic loyalty appears to reveal itself. Could it be that a crisis of the ethnic principle is emerging in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Or do the boundaries of the ethno-political influence on sports become apparent only to the extent that the national team is successful? Are the events in the football stadium purely a reflection of political developments, a recasting of what takes place in the parliaments? Or does a glance into the football stadium reveal something else entirely?

Southeast European and Black Sea Studies , 2019

Comparative Southeast European studies, 2014

This special issue of Südosteuropa focuses on the relationship between football and politics in (post-)Yugoslav societies and is based on a selection of papers presented in the lecture series "Sport and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia" at the University of Graz during the academic year 2012/2013. Although it was our intention from the start to publish a selection of papers, we were also guided by the idea of promoting the neglected academic topic of sport in Southeastern Europe as an innovative, fascinating, and fruitful field of empirical research for Southeast European Studies. Expressed generally outside the Southeast European and (post-)Yugoslav context, Eric Dunning's uncontroversial assumption that "sport matters" 1 indicates the broad consensus in academia that portrays the interrelation of sport and society as an increasingly relevant aspect of social research. It is the deep interconnectivity of sport and society that allows scholars in a variety of disciplines to take this area as a key reference point for their studies on a variety of theoretical issues, such as power relations; class and societal inequality; questions of race and ethnicity; gender relations and creation of gendered stereotypes; subcultural groups and fandom; and the role of sport in the formation of collective or national identity. The leading scholarship 2 contends, however, that researchers must not understand sport as a "quasi autonomous institution" or a "kind of self-sufficient […] subsystem" but rather as a "constitutive element of everyday life and popular culture" that takes place "within a particular social and historical setting". 3 Its global interconnections and social effects upon the

Special Issue of „Soccer & Society“ edited by Dario Brentin and Andrew Hodges on “Football from below in Southeastern Europe”. Contributions Dario Brentin & Andrew Hodges: Fan protest and activism: football from below in South-Eastern Europe (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333674) Daǧhan Irak: ‘Shoot some pepper gas at me!’ football fans vs. Erdoğan: organized politicization or reactive politics? (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333675) Dino Vukušić & Lukas Miošić: Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333676) Ivan Djordjević & Relja Pekić: Is there space for the left? Football fans and political positioning in Serbia (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333678) Adrien Battini & Deniz Koşulu: When ultras defend trees: framing politics through subcultural fandom-comparing UltrAslan and Çarşı before and during Occupy Gezi (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333673) Andrew Gilbert: Tri vjere, jedna nacija, država Tuzla! Football fans, political protest and the right to the city in postsocialist Bosnia–Herzegovina (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1335487) Dinu Guțu: World going one way, people another: ultras football gangs’ survival networks and clientelism in post-socialist Romania (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2017.1333677)

The present article deals with those social and economic factors that contributed to the genesis of Romanian soccer at the turn of the previous century. The author argues that football was imported from abroad via peregrination and schools, but certain social processes, such as urbanization, capitalization and the appearance of massive working classes, are the reasons why this beautiful game became socially embedded in the local environments. The different circumstances in Banat and Transylvania and in the old Romanian Kingdom marked the social history and trajectory "travelled" by the ball. While in the western part of the country, football arrived in a fertile ground because of the already existing bourgeois sport associations and the rapidly emerging local working classes, the role of foreign companies and expats in implementing football was more significant in the southern regions. This difference in the genesis of the game produced two distinct styles of playing football. These two styles clearly reflect the historical and social background specific to the different regions.

2012

The second half of the 20 th century witnessed the transformation of football from the "people's game", the egalitarian entertainment for the masses with weekend games being important part of the daily routines of working class males to one of the crucial spheres of global show business producing enormous profits.

Sport and Leisure on the Eve of the First World War, 2016

The very beginning of the 20th century was the time of great turbulences and crises in South East Europe. The on-going and rapid decay of the Ottoman Empire, violent power shifts and instability in the Kingdom of Serbia, the readiness of the young and potent Balkan nations to expand their territories and the desire of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to impose its influence and authority on the troubled region, reached its peak in this period. It all resulted in a series of low and mid-level incidents and confrontations, political, economic and cultural, which, in the long run, contributed heavily to the outbreak of the First World War. At the same time, the ideals of the European civic life, including the civic leisure practices, such as playing and watching football and other sports, were gradually introduced to the population of the Balkan cities and towns, in the beginning by their fellow countrymen who were fortunate to travel, work or study abroad, predominantly in Central Europe. The very fact that the first football contacts between Serbia and other parts of the so-called „Slavic South (Croatia, Slovenia, Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) with the rest of the world were in fact with the politically confronted Austria-Hungary and Germany, resulted in some very interesting developments. Those who first brought the knowledge of the game to Serbia were Austro-Hungarian citizens, predominantly Czechs, Croats and Hungarians. They taught young Serbian students to play football during their visits to the cities of Budapest, Zagreb, Prague or Vienna. Once the first Serbian football clubs had been founded in the first decade of the 20th century, some of the skilled footballers from the Austria-Hungary even moved to Serbia in order to play and improve the game. The contacts between the clubs from Serbia and Austria-Hungary were numerous in the period between 1903 and 1914 – a lot of friendlies and tournaments were played, mutual visits were frequent and footballers from Austria-Hungary could really be considered as the first genuine tutors of Serbian football enthusiasts. The relations were generally cordial and friendly but they also depended on politics – they got worse during the periods of political crises (notably during the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of 1908) and in those times football matches often became a stage for violent outbursts of nationalism and political agitation. Also, the quality of the sport relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary depended on the ethnic identities of the football clubs – relations between Serbian and Croatian or Czech football clubs were almost always good, but those between Serbian and Austrian or Hungarian were not. Regardless, the football connections between Serbia and Austria-Hungary were immensely important, and worth examining. The Habsburg Monarchy was a gateway for introduction of football to Serbia, and looking into it can tell us more about the spread of the game in Europe in such a crucial period. Also, the complex regional political situation can possibly be made clearer by examining the regional football history and off-setting it against the political and social realities of societies in question.

Soccer & Society, 2014

The paper analyses the game of football as a force of integration in diverse and war-torn societies. It is focused on Yugoslavia in two turbulent historical periods: after the First World War, when its nations had just started to form joint institutions; and after the Second World War, when the country was severely devastated by the Nazi occupiers and a bloody internal civil and ethnic strife. In both of these periods, football proved to be a positive influence in rebuilding trust and mutual cooperation. Regional differences also played a part in the process, both in terms of organization, and in terms of regional identities. The latter often influenced the social life of Yugoslav regions, and, thus, football as a part of it, but the influence was mutual, which is examined in this study. Finally, it is unavoidable to dwell, at least marginally, on the effect the game had on social distances and social integration.