Suchergebnisse

Football supporters worldwide organise protests, petitions, campaigns, workshops and congresses and are engaged in political lobbying. These expressions of supporters' activism are nourished by both discontent with developments in football culture and an effort to change them. The aim of this methodologically driven article is to critically examine the role of digital ethnographies in exploring these processes. To reflexively explore the complex realities of recent transformations in football culture, this research study complemented offline data with online data. The use of digital data is discussed along the following dimensions: informational, representational, epistemological and relational. It is argued that the analytical dualism employed to critically discuss the relationship between online and offline spheres should be complemented with empirical duality to fully understand the role played by the digital sphere in social reality.

This study explores the complexities and ambiguities of the recent increase in criticism among football supporters of so-called "modern football." Drawing on existing elaborations of the concept of reflexivity in sociology, this contribution theoretically extends the hegemony/resistance analytical framework that has commonly been used to portray the criticism of football supporters in strict opposition to neo-liberal trends. The examination of the social and symbolic mechanisms surrounding anti-neo-liberal campaigning suggests that the slogan has been embraced by heterogeneous actors with contrasting topics, values, beliefs, and opinions. Considering the different reactions of contested anti-neo-liberal institutions and the context in which these processes take place, it has been demonstrated that protests and reflexive discursive practices can both inhibit and enhance the transformative potential of the "Against modern football" slogan.

The significance of sport as a social practice remains hidden at the margins of sociology. This article aims to highlight the social significance of sport by providing a sociological interpretation of the transformations of sailing in Czechoslovakia, and later in the Czech Republic, following the Velvet Revolution of 1989. These sport-related changes are understood to be consequences of wider socio-cultural, economic and political transformations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of the Czech sailing movement, I argue that during Czechoslovakia's communist period, a time when sailing was labelled pejoratively as a `bourgeois sport', it actually experienced a `golden age' of enchantment. Based on Weber's concept of disenchantment and its subsequent developments in contemporary sociology, this article demonstrates how this earlier enchantment was jeopardized by disenchantment threats that occurred after 1989, and how sailing has once again been re-enchanted in the current period.

The main objective of the study is to explore the mechanisms influencing the nature of civic engagement in sport federations with a particular interest in barriers undermining their functioning. The article is based on the multi-sited ethnographic study in three sport governing bodies in the Czech Republic (handball, football and sailing) and uses a combination of techniques such as participant and non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and secondary analysis of available documents. The main barriers identified are seen as a product of encounters between local and national levels of sport governing bodies. The concept of social capital with its structural, relational and cognitive dimensions is presented as a tool to grasp the phenomena under study.

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Consumer Culture and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540517744692 ; This paper examines how football, sport and other cultural fields are characterized by complex interrelations between 'citizen' and 'consumer' identities. Our analysis centres specifically on critically examining and developing the concept of 'citimer' (citizen-consumer) with respect to activist supporter groups within European professional men's football. First, to establish the structural and cultural context for our analysis, we argue that the emergence of citizen-consumer identities in football has been driven by five underlying processes: globalization, commodification, securitization, mediatization, and postmodernization. Critical football fan movements have responded to these changes through greater reflexivization and politicization. Second, drawing on the broad academic literature, we develop the concept of the citizen-consumer (or 'citimer') and introduce its relevance to football. Third, to provide a more nuanced understanding of the citizen-consumer, we explore how this 'citimer' identity is constructed in two ways: 'from below' (by fan groups themselves at everyday level) and 'from above' (by clubs, governing bodies, media and other powerful forces within the football system). In both instances, we find that the citizen and consumer aspects of the citimer identity are interrelated in complex ways. Fourth, we conclude by highlighting the political reflexivity of citimers, and areas for future research. Our analysis draws on extensive data collection: with football supporters and officials in the Czech Republic, England and Italy, and at the wider European level; and, through access to diverse primary and secondary documents (e.g. policy papers, fanzines, and online forums). Our findings may be applied to examine citimer identities, practices and social relations not just within football and sport, but in many other cultural fields, such as art, communication, drama, fashion, film, and music.

This article extends the discussion on the 'dark side' of social capital in sport which has recently been increasingly conceptualized in civil society studies. We define the dark side of social capital as situations in which trust, social ties and shared beliefs and norms that may be beneficial to some persons are detrimental to other individuals, sport movements, or for society at large. Furthermore, we understand the dark side of social capital as attempts to manipulate and misuse trust to achieve a particular interest. We argue that the majority of studies using the notion of the dark side have investigated primarily sport practice rather than sport governance and have focused on either the macro- or micro-level, neglecting the meso-level. Additionally, previous studies have focused primarily on the exclusive role of bonding social networks at the expense of linking social capital and manipulation of trust. To contribute to reducing these gaps, our analysis draws on evidence gathered during a multi-sited ethnographic study of Czech and Italian sport associations governing football, handball and sailing.

This paper is closed access until 12 months after the date of publication. ; This paper analyses the contemporary public debate about vaccination, and medical knowledge more broadly, in the context of social media. The study is focused on the massive online debate prompted by the Facebook status of the digital celebrity Mark Zuckerberg, who posted a picture of his two-month-old daughter, accompanied by a comment: "Doctor's visit -- time for vaccines!" Carrying out a qualitative analysis on a sample of 650 comments and replies, selected through systematic random sampling from an initial pool of over 10,000 user contributions, and utilising open and axial coding, we empirically inform the theoretical discussion around the concept of the reflexive patient and introduce the notion of multi-layered reflexivity. We argue that the reflexive debate surrounding this primarily medical problem is influenced by both biomedical and social scientific knowledge. Lay actors therefore discuss not only vaccination, but also its political and economic aspects as well as the post-truth information context of the debate. We stress that the reflexivity of social actors related to the post-truth era re-enters and influences the debate more than ever. Furthermore, we suggest that the interconnection of different layers of reflexivity can either reinforce certainty or deepen the ambiguity and uncertainty of reflexive agents.

AbstractNonprofits are increasingly involved in cross‐sectoral collaborations with the public sector. However, we know little about the dynamics behind these collaborations and what happens to them in politically contested fields where actors may have divergent positions. In this article, a multi‐country comparison of data gathered from semi‐structured interviews (n = 68) with representatives of nonprofits involved in the labor market inclusion of newcomers is presented. Our findings indicate that, in politically contested fields, the possibility of participating in cross‐sectoral collaborations (political autonomy) is influenced by nonprofits' financial and ideological autonomy. Welfare models and migration regimes play a fundamental role in shaping the inclusion of these organizations in collaborations, and in most cases, the collaborations are based on latent conflicts. Our article discusses that if the costs of autonomy associated with cross‐sectoral collaborations are not offset, the collaboration in a politically contested field becomes a liability for nonprofits (and their beneficiaries).

The objective of this paper was to compare health outcomes and hospital care use of very low birth weight (VLBW), and very preterm (VLGA) infants in seven European countries. Analysis was performed on linkable patient-level registry data from seven European countries between 2006 and 2008 (Finland, Hungary, Italy (the Province of Rome), the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden). Mortality and length of stay (LoS) were adjusted for differences in gestational age (GA), sex, intrauterine growth, Apgar score at five minutes, parity and multiple births. The analysis included 16,087 infants. Both the 30-day and one-year adjusted mortality rates were lowest in the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden and Norway) and Scotland and highest in Hungary and the Netherlands. For survivors, the adjusted average LoS during the first year of life ranged from 56 days in the Netherlands and Scotland to 81 days in Hungary. There were large differences between European countries in mortality rates and LoS in VLBW and VLGA infants. Substantial data linkage problems were observed in most countries due to inadequate identification procedures at birth, which limit data validity and should be addressed by policy makers across Europe. ; Funding Agencies|European Union 7th Framework Programme European Health Care Outcomes, Performance and Efficiency (EuroHOPE) [241721]