In this video, Alex Galarza and I discuss digital fútbol scholarship at Michigan State University. The conversation ranges from Galarza’s doctoral dissertation entitled “Between Civic Association and Mass Consumption: The Soccer Clubs of Buenos Aires,” to the Football Scholars Forum, the online football think tank.
For more information about Galarza’s research click here.
Galarza’s project is titled “Between Civic Association and Mass Consumption: The Soccer Clubs of Buenos Aires.” It explores how clubs developed as both centers of mass spectacle and sites of everyday urban sociability. Club members and officials used political connections to secure city space and public subsidies for stadiums and the overall success of their professional teams. While clubs became centers of patronage and spectacle, they were also non-profit civic associations central to social and cultural activities in the city. Clubs provided educational facilities, libraries, leisure space, and political forums for their members.
Galarza’s research examines the tensions within football clubs during the mid-twentieth century, an era when Argentine society entered a period of deep economic and political changes following the ouster of Juan Domingo Perón in 1955. Perón’s project aimed at developing a new kind of citizen and civic culture in which the popular classes would have a greater political voice and heightened access to new forms of mass consumption. Mass political participation and consumption remained critical and unresolved tensions during the democratic and military governments that followed. One powerful example of how soccer clubs gave shape and meaning to civic engagement, popular spectacle, and mass consumption is Boca Juniors’ Ciudad Deportiva (in photo above). This failed project was a mix between a stadium complex and amusement park, built over seven artificial islands on sixty hectares of land filled in the Rio de la Plata.
Click here to read a digital version of Galarza’s preliminary work on the fascinating history of the Ciudad Deportiva.
Check back with us for an interview with Galarza in the coming days.
Diego Armando Maradona’s charges are doing their exquisite best to keep South Africa 2010 from matching Italia ’90 as the dullest World Cup in terms of quality of play. Argentina’s performances so far have been better than Germany, Uruguay, Brazil, and better than those of their likely semifinal adversaries: Spain.
Gracias Dieguito for quenching our thirst in a desert of scientific catenaccio. Maradona’s side produces a organized, attacking, flowing game. Gonzalo Higuain is the tournament’s leading scorer, with Carlitos Tevez close behind (what a strike against Mexico!). And, of course, King Leo is always eager to please ‘beggars for good football’ like me (Galeano docet).
One regret: Germany’s 4-1 victory yesterday in Bloemfontein denied us the pleasure of seeing Maradona take on England in the quarterfinals.
1. FIFA got the seedings right. Pot 1 seeds earned their ranking. France did not. France’s final appearance was four years ago.
2. Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have come out of the pot alignment better than most. Each of the smaller South American nations will avoid the big five African qualifiers in the 1st Round.
3. Argentina and Brazil cannot avoid the African qualifiers from Pot 3. The seeds for two potential Groups of Death have now been sown. Has FIFA put Brazil at risk for an early bath?
4. The most frightening Group of Death would be: Brazil, Mexico, Côte d’Ivoire and Portugal.
Paraguay have qualified. Chile can choke. Ecuador too. Argentina are at home to Peru next. Uruguay have superior goal difference. Venezuela are lurking. Colombia cannot be ruled out just yet.
There are so many permutations, yet it is difficult to discuss without getting drawn into the Argentine drama.
Argentina losing at home to Brazil was not so extraordinary. It had happened before. It was actually more noteworthy when several months earlier Uruguay lost a World Cup qualifier at home to Brazil. That had never happened before.
South American World Cup qualifiers are ultimately predictable affairs, the current Argentine drama notwithstanding. Earlier in the qualifiers, bigger questions hung over Brazil.
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Alex Galarza, a PhD student in history at Michigan State University and co-founder of the Football Scholars Forum, has been awarded the João Havelange Research Scholarship. This prestigious award is administered jointly by FIFA and CIES (Centre International d’Etude du Sport), an independent research center created in 1995 by the governing body in collaboration with the University of Neuchâtel, and the City and State of Neuchatel, Switzerland.
