Richard Giulianotti

Loughborough University | Lough · School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

The summer Olympic Games are renowned for producing the world's biggest single-city cultural event. While the Olympics and other sport mega-events have received growing levels of academic investigation from a variety of disciplinary approaches, relatively little is known about how such occasions are experienced directly by local host communities an...

This paper examines and applies the widely influential work of Boltanski and Thévenot in order to investigate and understand the political issues or disputes within sport. We provide a critical elaboration of Boltanski and Thévenot’s theory of the six ‘orders of worth’ or ‘worlds’ of justification that are drawn upon by social actors within these d...

World football (or soccer) has undergone an intensive hypercommodification over the past decade or so. This article examines the impact of this process on forms of spectator identification with top professional football clubs. Drawing upon previous analyses by Taylor and Critcher (on football) and the theories of Bryan Turner (on body culture), the...

This paper examines the critical role of global sport within Qatar’s international strategy, most notably through the successful bid to stage the 2022 football World Cup. Our discussion draws particularly on interviews with key stakeholders in the Qatari sport system, as well as fieldwork in Qatar and the analysis of relevant documents and secondar...

Purpose – This paper aims to advance a critical analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within sport. First, the author locates CSR within the wider field of sport-related social activities. Second, the author identifies key issues that confront CSR in sport. Third, while referring to papers elsewhere in this issue of the journal, the aut...

The relevance of a sociological view on the problems of society has never been as important as it is today. To quote the editors of the journal Nature in their editorial, Time for the Social Sciences, from 2015: if you want science to deliver for society, you need to support a capacity to understand that society. In other words, the technological a...

This chapter examines the main themes, debates and issues relating to the sociological study of football fans in the United Kingdom. The discussion covers five main areas of sociological research. First, we explore national issues relating to football and fandom in the United Kingdom, primarily along the old lines of England, Scotland, Wales, and N...

The overall aim of this study is to evaluate the pre- and post-event impact of hosting a portfolio of hallmark sports events, for branding the international image of the host, through a study of Saudi Arabia (SA). In doing so, the study will help to determine the extent to which hosting a portfolio of hallmark sports events – in this case, Formula...

Background In 2021, a fan-led review of football governance in England recommended that legislation surrounding alcohol and football be reviewed to determine whether it is still fit for purpose, the first such review since the mid-1980s. Restricting football fans’ alcohol consumption has been debated in the UK for over 40 years. However, more resea...

Availability of alcohol at football matches in the UK is much debated and subject to multiple restrictions, yet there is little understanding of supporters’ attitudes. A cross-sectional survey of football supporters in Scotland and England (n = 1750) was conducted April–June 2019. Most supporters viewed drinking at matches as acceptable (74.4%) and...

The global “sport for development and peace” (SDP) sector uses sport as a field of social activity to promote diverse types of non-sport social development. In this short perspective article, I critically examine and advocate the engagement of SDP with environmental issues. I argue for the adoption of a “socio-ecological” approach, to enable a gree...

It has long been held that participation in sport, physical activity (PA) and physical education (PE) can yield valuable benefits for young people (Bailey et al., 2009. The educational benefits claimed for physical education and school sport: An academic review. Research Papers in Education, 24(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701809817)....

In this paper, we seek to advance understandings of the contemporary global ‘sport for development and peace’ (SDP) sector, with respect to volunteers and volunteering in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Volunteers play a critical role in organizing and delivering SDP social intervention programmes across the world; most SDP volunteer work...

This paper introduces the journal special issue, which is devoted to managerial and organizational issues in the global field of “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP). SDP encompasses the large and rapidly growing global domain in which sports, games and physical activities are used to pursue diverse non-sporting social goals. There are now many...

This paper provides a systematic, detailed analysis of UK mass media online reports and narratives on sport and Covid-19 during the main lockdown period over March-May 2020. A "structuralist thematic" approach is utilized to identify and to map systematically the main themes within the mass media. The research is based on reports and narratives on...

The notion of ‘community’ is embedded in the context, narratives, and objectives held within the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector. The founding principles of SDP speak of sport as a universal language and a powerful tool in the quest for achieving peace, equality, inclusion, and social impact. Sport is seen as a tool to access those o...

Key events and episodes in football’s history are central to the making of personal and collective understandings of the global game at local, national and transnational levels. To explore these themes, this paper is organized into three main parts. First, I explore how diverse key events are spotlighted in the game’s social history, including epis...

Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has grown into a huge global field of sport-related activity and intervention and is a heavily researched subject in the social scientific study of sport. In this article, we advance the case for a new research agenda in SDP, in part to contribute more fully to sustainable development through substantial societ...

This paper highlights the need for critical attention and reflection within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector regarding the physical environment. Drawing on fieldwork that examined a variety of SDP initiatives in five different countries, we argue that instrumental concerns at local levels often mean that the physical environment tak...

Artykuł analizuje konstytuowanie się bezpieczeństwa na igrzyskach olimpijskich jako kwestię centralną dla organizatorów i ruchu olimpijskiego oraz konsekwencje organizacji igrzysk dla lokalnej społeczności i narodowej polityki bezpieczeństwa. Zakłada się, że igrzyska olimpijskie, jako wydarzenie o wysokim profilu medialnym, dostarczają coraz bardzi...

This article explores the national and global significance and impact of Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 summer Olympic Games. The discussion is organized into four main parts. First, I locate the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the context of wider processes of globalization; in particular, I explore how China ‘glocalized’ the Olympics, by giving the event...

This chapter explores the key features of sociology as a discipline, and provides the author’s personal reflections on becoming a sociologist, particularly in the specialist field of the sociology of sport. Sociology is presented here as a discipline that, at its best, is diverse in theory and method, open to engagement with other disciplines, and...

This paper examines the politics of mobility which surrounded the London 2012 Olympics. We provide a critical discussion of the mobility conflicts, problems and criticisms which emerged from our research with local people in the Stratford and wider Newham areas of London, where most Olympic events were located. The paper is divided into four broad...

The State of Qatar, a sovereign Arab State, has recently embarked on an ambitious sports-led venture. This has seen the state host numerous global sporting events, secure overseas sports-related acquisitions, and fund the infrastructure of world-class sports infrastructure. This chapter discusses the role of such sporting forms by situating them wi...

This article examines the diverse forms of public opposition, protest, criticism, and complaint in the United Kingdom on the staging of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. Our discussion draws heavily on empirical research, primarily fieldwork and interviews in East London with local residents, opposition groups, business people, polit...

This chapter explores four key aspects of globalization within the context of sport: first, the historical phases; second, sociocultural issues; third, political-economic questions; and fourth, debates surrounding the emergence of a global civil society. It focuses on Robertson's six-phase historical schema of globalization, which spans the fifteen...

The volume deals with football fandom culture and identity revealing identity politics and contestations within contemporary football worlds. The aim of the volume is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to contribute in the construction of a distinct field research in Greece around sport and football studies opening up a serious scientific debate on...

In recent years, there has been considerable interest at political and public levels in the contribution that sport might make to advancing what is commonly referred to as social development, as well as peace and conflict resolution in divided and conflict-damaged societies. As a consequence, the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (hereon, SDP) sect...

In recent years, a wide variety of organizations (notably the UN and nongovernmental organizations) have used sport as an interventionist tool to nurture peacemaking across divided communities. This paper examines and theorizes these peacemaking initiatives across the expanding ‘sport, development and peace’ (SDP) sector. I begin by locating SDP pr...

This article traces the emergence of security at the Olympic Games as a key concern of host governments and of the Olympic movement and analyses the implications of this heightened concern for the delivery of the Games, the local host community and for national security policy. It is argued that the Olympic Games, as a high profile media event, pro...

This paper introduces the special issue of the British Journal of Sociology on the subject of the transnational aspects of Olympic and world sport. The special issue is underpinned by the perspective that because sport provides a space for the forging of transnational connections and global consciousness, it is increasingly significant within conte...

This paper provides a sociological model of the key transnational political and economic forces that are shaping the 'global football field'. The model draws upon, and significantly extends, the theory of the 'global field' developed previously by Robertson. The model features four quadrants, each of which contains a dominant operating principle, a...

The article explores critically the interplay between sport and terrorism, with particular reference to sport mega-events. Our discussion is divided into two main sections. First, we set out the main principles of a critical social theoretical approach, which enables satisfactory analysis of the ‘sport/terrorism’ couplet. We discuss the contributio...

Association football (also known as soccer, particularly in North America) is widely acknowledged to be the world's most popular single sport. Football's global governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), has 208 national member associations, while its showcase tournament, the World Cup finals, is played every four...

This paper explores the interrelationships of security policies and processes of commodification with respect to contemporary sport mega events (SMEs). First, it is argued that we need to move beyond conventional understandings of SMEs, as specific occasions fixed in time and space. Instead, we should examine more diffuse forms of SME, as illustrat...

This paper examines the ‘sport, development and peace’ (SDP) sector which has grown substantially at a global level over the past decade. The SDP sector is located conceptually within the broader ‘global civil society’, a highly contested policy field that features diverse political actors and ideologies. The main discussion sets out four ideal-typ...

This paper examines the role and contribution of peacemaking to the wider sport, development and peace (sdp) sector. Particular attention is paid to a hitherto under-explored subject: the complex position of the military vis-à-vis sport and sport-related peacekeeping. Through an historical overview of the sport–military intersection, reference to f...

In recent years, there has been considerable political and public interest in the “sport, development and peace” (SDP) sector. SDP agencies employ sport as an interventionist tool to promote peace, reconciliation, and development in different locations across the world. This article examines how SDP officials view their work and the sector in gener...

In recent years, a wide variety of organizations (notably the UN and nongovernmental organizations) have used sport as an interventionist tool to nurture peacemaking across divided communities. This paper examines and theorizes these peacemaking initiatives across the expanding 'sport, development and peace' (SDP) sector. I begin by locating SDP pr...

In the post-9/11 context, security issues have become increasingly central to the hosting of sport mega-events (SMEs). Security budgets for events like the Olympic Games now run into billions of dollars. This article seeks to advance the emerging field of SME security research in substantive and analytical terms. We identify three sets of issues an...

Risk has been a prominent keyword in public and academic spheres since the early 1990s. Discourses of risk assessment and management now underpin a vast range of professional, social and political domains, from the planning of children’s leisure to global diplomacy on nuclear proliferation. Similar to “cultural” and “global” turns, we may speak...

This short paper seeks to explain the activities of Scottish fans in Genoa and Turin, during the 1990 World Cup, by drawing on some key concepts offered by contemporary writers in the field of post-modernism and post-structuralism. These writers include Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Baudrillard. All emphasize a re-empowerment of agency, evading mo...

Abstract The aims of this special issue are to both raise the social scientific status of sport and to advance understanding of transnational processes through the role of sport in global change. The Introduction argues that sport, like globalization, can be understood in transdisciplinary terms, and the papers included contributions informed by so...

Abstract In this article, we place the social and football (as a sporting realm) at the heart of social scientific analysis of globalization processes. Our theoretical framework sets out, in turn, the concepts of glocalization, with particular reference to what we term the ‘duality of glocality’; transnationalism, notably its socio-historical aspec...

The article examines the construction of critical, resistant identities among supporters of the powerful Scottish football club, Rangers. The analysis is underpinned by two general arguments relating to identity construction: (1) the need to examine carefully the cultural politics of relatively advantaged groups within the field of popular culture...

The concept of glocalization has the potential to advance sociological understanding of globalization with reference to social agency and cultural differentiation. In this article, we develop a four-fold typology of glocalization projects, with reference to relativization, accommodation, hybridization and transformation. We illustrate and elaborate...

Drawing upon extensive urban anthropological fieldwork with football hooligan formations in England and Scotland, it is argued that academics have failed to examine adequately the spatial dimension underlying hooligan conflicts. The spatially affective aspects of football fandom in general are identified; via Fiske's dichotomy of locales and statio...

In this paper we examines the globalization of football by focusing in turn on its historical, cultural, economic and political dimensions. In general terms, we emphasizes how the globalization of football highlights the continuing sociological significance of societal diversity and cultural heterogeneity in regard to global processes. We explore h...

In this paper we examines the globalization of football by focusing in turn on its historical, cultural, economic and political dimensions. In general terms, we emphasizes how the globalization of football highlights the continuing sociological significance of societal diversity and cultural heterogeneity in regard to global processes. We explore h...

The concept of glocalization is used to analyse the ways in which social actors construct meanings, identities and institutional forms within the sociological context of globalization, conceived in multidimensional terms. This article seeks to advance the sociological grasp of glocalization processes through a field-work-rooted study of particular...

Neste texto Giulianotti estuda a relacao tensa existente entre identidade nacional e globalizacao, na experiencia recente dos clubes e do selecionado nacional na Escocia, refletindo sempre o complexo contexto do Reino Unido. Cultural globalization on the borders: the case of scottish football Abstract In this text, Giulianotti studies the tense re...

While it features regularly in anthropological literature, the concept of voice is rarely elaborated by way of definition or substantive application. In this article I develop a critical anthropological theorization of voice with reference to the ideas of Hymes, Bernstein, Bourdieu, Foucault and Bakhtin. I extend these conceptual claims substantive...

The commodification of football has been the subject of substantial sociological debate but has received relatively limited scrutiny in terms of sustained comparative empirical research. This article draws heavily on interviews with supporter groups, journalists, and officials in Scottish football to examine a range of issues relating to fan experi...

Georg Simmel is one of sociology’s most influential early figures, although arguably his work has been under-utilized in many scholarly fields, including sport studies. Some of Simmel’s most important theoretical and substantive arguments are deployed to develop a sociological analysis of a specific sports subculture: the ‘Tartan Army’ of supporter...

In this lively new book, Richard Giulianotti provides a critical sociological interpretation of modern sport. As global festivals such as the Olympic games and football’s World Cup demonstrate, sport’s social, political, economic and cultural significance is becoming increasingly apparent across the world. Its popularity alone means that sociologis...

Association football, otherwise known as soccer, is without question the world’s most popular sport. Globally soccer is played and watched by more people than any other game. While the American professional basketball (NBA) and football/gridiron (NFL) leagues struggle to cultivate a massive European following, soccer has been successfully transplan...

Sport, in particular football, constitutes one of the most dynamic, sociologically illuminating domains of globalization. This paper examines the globalization of football with particular reference to Robertson's theorizations of global processes. We examine football's cultural globalization through the concept of 'glocalization', which highlights...

It was mid-afternoon on the humid, sunny eve of the UEFA Cup final in Seville, and I was walking back along the Avenue de la Constitucion in the host city's centre. Awaiting ahead round the corner was Flaherty's Irish bar, across from the city's cathedral, and the main congregation point for hundreds of Celtic fans. From that direction emerged two...

Britain, France and Germany possess three distinctive kinds of sports policy that reflect differences in their political and social history. In Britain, sports policy has been marked in recent years by the social control and free-market principles of Conservative government, followed by ‘New Labour’s’ concern with issues of social exclusion and mod...

Norbert Elias’s status as an influential sociologist was secured only in the late 1970s, when the first volume of his magnum opus, The Civilizing Process, was finally published in English. By that stage, already over 80 years old, Elias had given an extraordinary lifetime’s service to the discipline of sociology.

In 1997 Alan Ingham and Peter Donnelly published a long and challenging article detailing the history of the sociology of sport in North America. In conclusion, they posed the twin questions: ‘Is any position hegemonic in our current stage of development?’ and ‘Should any position be hegemonic in the future?’ While answering firmly in the negative...

Acknowledgements. Glossary. Foreward. 1. The Essence of Football: the historical and social bases of the global game. 2. The Twentieth--century Sport: football, class and nation. 3. Spectator Cultures: passion at play in Europe and Latin America. 4. Football Grounds: emotional attachments and social control. 5. The Price of Victory: football financ...

The game of football has a rich global history. Most cultures and civilisations seem to have played some kind of proto-football, involving the kicking of a ball between various groups of players. The Chinese game of CuJu was played during neolithic times. The indigenous peoples of North and Central America played ball games as part of their fertili...

This article addresses the vast heterogeneity of UK media reports on illicit drugs by applying Michel Foucault's archaeological methodology. Accordingly, the media reports are classified to reflect their connections within a discursive formation that is itself situated within the milieu of postmodernity. By using the binary oppositions of private-p...

This article examines from an ethnographic perspective Irish soccer fan activities at the 1994 World Cup Finals in the United States. An introductory discussion notes the limited previous study of Irish soccer fans, and critically assesses the relationship of Irish nationalism to sport. The activities of Irish fans are then examined in relation to...

At football's 1992 European Championship Finals in Sweden, the 5,000 Scottish fans ('The Tartan Army') attending, won the UEFA 'Fair Play' award for their friendly and sporting conduct. The award appears to be the culmination of a major 'change' in the international identity of the Scottish supporter over the last two decades. However, as this pape...

his paper discusses fieldwork experiences derived while initiating and undertaking substantive participant observation research with two rival groups of Scottish football hooligans ('football casuals'). Key problems examined are those that emerge from attempted entrée into the hooligan subcultures and the everyday risks of comparative research with...

This paper explores the logistic, social structural and affective properties of Scotland football supporters attending two types of international fixture abroad: a high prestige tournament in Sweden and a low prestige qualifier in Romania. Representative samples of supporters were canvassed on both occasions, and the accruing data subjected to univ...

Our fundamental, epistemological position is that football hooligans and the mass media's representatives constitute two distinctive entities that have different social purposes. Formally, hooligans belong to rival 'mobs' that are deeply associated with particular football sides. The hooligans engage in competitive violence with their rivals, with...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Aberdeen, 1996.