The game of soccer in particular has great appeal and relevance for adolescents and young adults, as well as a communal potential, not only in active play, but also as an event that can be seen (and in some cases felt). The Football project group of the Games Research Unit aims to promote knowledge, conduct empirical research and develop theoretical models on this subject area at the interface of youth culture, deviance, communitization, commercialization of sport/games, etc. The project group is concerned with the practices, orders, rules and bodies of knowledge of (major) sporting events in the stands and stands of soccer (but also other sports). Thus, the perspective of the audience is taken, the question of the constitution and performance as spectators is dealt with.
Current message
Due to the current situation, we would like to point out that we are unable to give press interviews on current incidents in professional soccer. Our research and publications are social science-based and data-driven. It is not possible for us to provide an assessment of events that we ourselves only know about from press coverage or that we happened to be present at as private individuals, nor can we responsibly suggest (social) educational interventions from a distance. We also recognize that instructive advice from us could prove to be a hindrance to those actually working in the field. We are happy to answer detailed questions about our research, our publications, our conferences and our activities in general. The best way to do this is to send us an e-mail.
Activities
Conference "Social science perspectives on soccer fan research"
On November 5, 2015, the soccer project group organized the symposium "Social Science Perspectives on Football Fan Research" in cooperation with the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) at Bielefeld University.
Social magazine on the subject of "Competition"
edited by Judith von der Heyde and Jochem Kotthaus
The European Men's Football Championship kicks off in France on June 10 - just in time for the publication of issue 5/6 2016 of Sozialmagazin. It is practically impossible to escape the spectacle of the continental championship. The media, political and social reception is too far-reaching, which is consequently also noticeable in social work. In social work, education and even the sports associations themselves, soccer is seen as a representation of a fair, competitive, cosmopolitan competition that unites population groups. Countless youth facilities will host their own tournaments in the summer or organize other sports activities, sometimes with an emphasis on competition, sometimes deliberately avoiding it. Active sport is said to have a 'positive' socializing, normative and integrative effect. Passive sport, i.e. watching the spectacle, is therefore also seen and acted upon as a teaching and learning surface. This issue of Sozialmagazin deals with sport as competition and its discursive and practical connections to social work.
With contributions and interviews by: Marcus Bölz, Frank Brunn, Gerd Dembowski, Wolfram Eilenberger, Judith von der Heyde, Stefan Krause, Michael Gabriel, Michael Krüger, Harald Michels and Jürgen Schwier
Series "Sports fans in the focus of social science research" published by Beltz-Verlag
The Football Project Group of the Games Research Unit is co-editor of the series "Sportfans im Blickpunkt sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung" (Sports fans in the focus of social science research), which will be published by Beltz-Verlag from 2016.
For sports fans, identifying with a sports team and an athlete is part of their everyday lives. They support their favorite teams or athletes in soccer stadiums, ice hockey rinks and the media. In national and international sports competitions, the audience is a constitutive part of the event. Such mass phenomena raise numerous questions for social science research about the effects of being a fan on the socialization processes and identity development of those involved, as well as social processes and discourses. In addition, social developments also influence the actions of those involved. In this context, sports fans create spaces for interaction and collectivity(ies), they produce culture and emotions, but also deviance and violence. Accordingly, they are a target group for social institutions such as educational, media and security institutions.
The series "Sportfans im Blickpunkt sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung" publishes outstanding empirical and theoretical contributions from the field of social science research on the topic of "sports fans". These can be monographs, handbooks and textbooks as well as anthologies. The contributions are intended to provide impulses for social science research as a whole and its related disciplines (e.g. cultural studies, law and sports science).
Editors of the series:
Andreas Grau (Bielefeld), Judith von der Heyde (Dortmund), Jochem Kotthaus (Dortmund), Holger Schmidt (Dortmund), Martin Winands (Bielefeld)
"Competition in soccer - soccer in competition"
The latest publication from the soccer project group was published by Beltz-Verlag in September. It takes a perspective that is constitutive for soccer: The sporting event in its character as a competitive confrontation. The volume takes the World and European Football Championships as an opportunity to examine the ambivalence between sporting competition and peaceful spectacle, body staging and heteronormativity, party and nationalism, educational opportunity and ideology from the perspectives of social sciences, humanities and cultural studies.
1st Dortmund Fan Research Forum
The 1st Dortmund Fan Research Forum on 17.11.2016 at the German Football Museum brought together over 30 researchers (and a fan representative) and was organized by the Football Project Group of the Game Research Unit. The speakers presented and discussed seven current research projects in social science fan research in a concentrated atmosphere. The forum served to make fan research more compatible with social science studies and theory - and also as the start of a network of academic colleagues researching fans and audiences. The next meeting is already scheduled for November 16, 2017, and the call for contributions will be available here in the spring.
2nd Dortmund Fan Research Forum
The 2nd Dortmund Expert Forum took place on 16.11.2017 at the Fachhochschule Dortmund.