The 1990 World Cup hosted by Italy is often remembered for the exploits of Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions. Led by 38-year-old striker Roger Milla, Cameroon legitimized African football on the global stage with their 1-0 victory over Maradona’s Argentina in the opening game and then becoming the first African team to reach the World Cup quarterfinals. In 1994, Bea Vidacs, a Hungarian anthropologist based in the United States, landed in Yaoundé to begin her research on football and identity in Cameroon. Visions of a Better World: Football in the Cameroonian Social Imagination is a revised version of a doctoral thesis completed in 2002, a study that over the years midwifed several very good journal articles and chapters in scholarly collections.
Read my full review at H-Soz-u-Kult.
Category: Fútbology
In Making History, a BBC Radio 4 series exploring ordinary people’s links with the past, we learn about the first African team to play in Europe. Making History listener Eryl Freestone has a memoir written by her grandfather which describes a tour of black South African footballers that he helped organize in 1899, just as the South African War was about to start. Eryl meets with Chris Bolsmann at Aston University who has been researching the tour and was desperate to find an ancestor of WM Williams’ – Ery’s grandfather.
Listen here (segment starts at 09:00).
Categories
Fútbol and Politics in Chile
The Football Scholars Forum launches its 2011-12 season this Friday (Sept. 23, 3pm EDT) with Brenda Elsey’s new book Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (University of Texas Press, 2011). It’s a fresh look at life in twentieth-century Chile through an exploration of how fútbol clubs integrated working-class men into urban politics, connected them to parties, and served as venues of political critique. You can join the conversation online via Skype. For more information visit the FSF website.
Categories
Webcast: Sports in Africa Symposium
On Friday, March 11, the Institute for the African Child and the Center for Sports Administration are hosting the 7th Sports in Africa symposium at Ohio University. The program — including my keynote address — will be webcasted from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m (GMT -5) on https://adobeconnect.oit.ohio.edu/sportsinafrica2011/