Cultures of Memory in Football Fanzines. A Content Analysis

Textbook, 2014, 80 Pages

Health - Sport - Sport Sociology

Excerpt

1. Introduction

The aim of this study is to show to what extent cultures of memory are important

parts of the content of football fanzines and how they are exercised. It will also be

discussed why these cultures of memory are an important part in the fanzines and for

the people involved in the production of fanzines. The literature review in chapter one

highlights the strength and weaknesses of written accounts on football fanzines and also

examines concepts of memory that deliver an explanation for the use of cultures of

memory in football fanzines. These include theories by Maurice Halbwachs who is

acknowledged as the founding father of the field of collective memory. Pierre Nora

takes this idea and adapts it to the collective memory of a nation, here France. Aby

Warburg investigated how in Western European countries a pictorial memory has been

developed over the course of the last 500 years through which pictures and images from

the ancient past are recycled.

The sociological perspectives that will be presented here are used to give

possible explanations about why there are cultures of memory in the content of football

fanzines. Norbert Elias work on established and outsider relationships will be used to

explain why football fans separate themselves from ordinary spectators in football

stadia. He further looked at power relationships in this context. Also, the idea of a

civilizing process is looked at and explained if such a thing had taken place among

football fans to become producers and editors of football fanzines.

Throughout the work the history of football fanzines will be highlighted. This

has partially been done by some writers mentioned in the literature review. These

accounts examine the history of the fanzines until the mid-1990s. English football saw

massive changes in the 1990s in the wake of the Taylor Report (1990) and with the

introduction of the Premier League in 1992. Therefore the fanzines not only offered a

platform for discussion of what has changed for them, but also the editors took the time

to remember the favourite players of the supporters, their views of the past and to

publish their opinion on club issues as well as footballing ones, that means match

reports and a critical judgement of the players' performance by the writers. In most of

the literature mentioned in chapter one the 1990's are described as the heydays of

football fanzines. Something that Boyle and Haynes describe as harking back to a more

secure, less complex society (2000:202). In their point of view the fans themselves

become historians of the game and their club.

The third chapter introduces the methods applied to the dissertation to find out

about the presence of cultures of memory. This is done by way of a content analysis. All

relevant categories of memory are presented here and were sought for in the content of

the fanzines examined. These will be found in Appendix 1. The results from this chapter

will be found in Appendix 2. There is a table which lists all fanzines examined and all

categories of memory combined and it will be shown if these categories are part of the

content of football fanzines or not.

Chapter four is dedicated to the explanations for the findings from the preceding

chapter. As the sample for the study is split into two, one part examining the 1990s the

other fanzines from 2000 onwards we can draw conclusions about the development of

football fanzines since the mid-1990s. Therefore, the history of fanzines is continued in

this chapter, although this dissertation does not intend to give a chapter on the history of

football fanzines. But to split the sample and examine the fanzines proved useful to

outline the history of fanzines in the time period examined.

Chapter five brings a discussion about whether or not the theoretical framework

can be approved of or if the theories outlined are not useful and if football fanzines do

not contain cultures of memory at all. In any case it is analyzed why that is and what

possible conclusions can be drawn from it for the further exploration of football

fanzines and cultures of memory.

In the appendices there is a list of fanzines as well as a table that shows the

results of the content analysis

2. Literature review

There is a canon of literature dealing with the development of football, its

commercialization and football hooliganism while there is only a small amount of

writing about football fanzines. The literature dealing with football fanzines will be

introduced here and examined for its strength and weaknesses. Further, theories on

memory will be highlighted as well as sociological theories will be scrutinized for the

purpose of this dissertation.

2.1. Literature on Fans and Fanzines

The topic of football fanzines has not been explored extensively, but nonetheless

there is a reasonable amount of writing that deals with football fanzines, most of it was

written in the early or mid 1990s. At that time football fanzines were mushrooming

across the UK and as a new phenomenon attracted attention from scholars. Sufficient

accounts on the emergence of football fanzines are given by Jary et al. (1991), Duke

(1991), Boyle (1994), Brown (1994), Haynes (1995), Giulianotti (1997,1999) and

Dunning (1999).

Haynes' (1995) account on football fanzines has explored the topic most

intensively to date. He describes the history of football fanzines from the roots until the

mid-1990s. The first fanzines produced were edited by music fans who wrote about

punk rock and punk culture in the late 1970 and early 1980s. Although some fanzines

were published before When Saturday Comes (further: WSC) it was only with the

emergence of WSC in 1986 that the fanzine scene kick-started and developed (Haynes:

55). The English national fanzine

WSC started as an off-shoot of the punk fanzine

Sniffin' Glue (Haynes: 39), and was distributed as a "...page supplement to Cardigan

, a

short-lived magazine..." (Haynes: 69). It is important for Haynes to stress the idea that

the voice of independent reporting about football opposes the main stream view

perpetuated by the media and the government. Haynes argues against the wide spread

belief that every football supporter was automatically a hooligan and thus sees the

fanzines as a reaction by fans to this attitude. Fans' reporting on football was necessary

to help express alternative views about the game which differed from the perspective

supported and perpetuated by the main stream media. Haynes writes about football

fanzines as a culture of defence, as an opposition to the mainstream media and opinion

makers and an expression of dissatisfaction with the media-saturated sport and simply

to show that football fans are not all hooligans. The tools for this culture to be

established were and still are fanzines and independent supporter groups such as the

Football Supporters Association (FSA). Haynes gives a good insight into the history of

the development of the fanzine scene in England and Scotland by outlining the history

of WSC and Off The Ball

(OTB), the Scottish equivalent to WSC. Also, Haynes

sketches the development of the subculture that surrounds fanzines and the fan scene in

terms of distribution and support. For example the sharing of articles between fanzines

was common among fanzine editors showing that a sense of community was

establishing with the editors and writers of different fanzines. The shortcoming of this

book is that it does not state who the actual writers of football fanzines are, to which

social class they belong to and what their educational background is. Roderick (1996) is

right to address this failure in his review of Haynes, but then this is to be said of nearly

every account on fanzines apart from Giulianotti (1999). Nonetheless, Haynes' book is

a very useful source for the history of fanzines and the culture that evolved around it,

written at a time when fanzines in football were something new and fashionable.

In the opening chapter, Haynes analyzes Marxist theories and Figurationalist

theories in terms of explanations of football hooliganism in citing Taylor (1971) and

Dunning (1988) for suitable explanations on the topic of hooliganism. Taylor produces

a "romanticised view on the past" (Taylor cited in: Haynes:5) in writing about a

"participatory democracy" (Taylor:143) that football fans establish with their local

team; meaning that they can tell managers and coaches where to find a talented player

and help to raise money for the club. Thus, the involvement of supporters was much

higher. Only through professionalization and bourgeoisification of the game this

democracy became obsolete (Taylor:145). The influence the fans and supporters had

before the Second World War was much bigger than it was after and especially the

1960s and 1970s saw a massive change in the ruling of football clubs and the full

establishment of professionalism that consequently led to football hooliganism,

according to Taylor. This approach is opposed by what Haynes calls the "Leicester

School of Thought" (Haynes:12). He gives an analogy of the rise of the school and

names its publications to date that deal with hooliganism but falls short in outlining the

theory the members of the Leicester school adhere to. Rather he describes the scholars

working there as strictly adhering to Norbert Elias' theory of civilizing processes and

defending this approach against criticism from the outside. Although it seems that

Haynes does not warm to these two theoretical frameworks, he nevertheless delivers a

fruitful insight into the development of football fanzines, the distribution of fanzines,

issues concerning the content and commercialization of football fanzines and the topic

of full-time employment of the editors.

In their article about fanzines Jary et al. (1991:582) postulate that sport is a field

that can easily be "...utilized as a vehicle in the exercise of hegemony..." because it is

less alien than "'high culture'". The link between sport and politics is well documented

in the literature but this dissertation does not focus on sports and politics. It is mainly

the Olympic Games that offer a great stage for the expression of political thoughts or for

the use as a political stage. The most famous examples are the Games held in Berlin

1936 or the Black Power salute by Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Games in

Mexico City. Since the end of WWII no Olympic event went by without any political

connotation. Vinnai (1972) explores topics such as sport and the military and the

political conscience of students of sport. In East Germany, and probably throughout

Eastern Europe, sport was used to underline the idea that communism was supposed to

be the better way of living and which produced Olympic medal winners and world

champions. For example, it is now proven that East Germany ran a sports programme

that was only rivalled by the former Soviet Union which might help to underline this

point.

Therefore, Jary et al. follow a tradition among Marxist writers that sport is a

political tool in stating that football fanzines can be used as a platform for resistance.

This is exactly where they place the fanzine movement into, a form of politically

motivated resistance against a bias from the national media and the government.

Fanzines are thus a possibility to publish opinions that would otherwise go unheard

either by neglecting or repression through the media and the clubs. Jary et al. describe

the same phenomenon as Haynes but subscribe the fanzines into a political role as the

authors postulate that the fanzines are supposed to work as a way of `cultural

contestation' against the main stream (Jary et al. 1991:581). The authors further deliver

chapters on the general content of fanzines, look at the producers and how fanzines

together with the FSA form a successful pressure group within the football industry.

There are two conclusions in this article, a) fanzines in fact are a case of successful

contestation in and through sport and the authors point out that fanzines not only in

sports are a form of successful contestation and b) they bring implications for football

research, demanding to widen the focus of football research and not only to focus on

football hooliganism. That is an ambitious request and is certainly correct, but as the

1970s and 1980s saw hooliganism as the main problem in British football it is only

logical that most attention is brought towards a sufficient explanation of the problem

and to deliver possible solutions. The authors deliver a critique on the Leicester Centre

for Football Research in complaining about the focus being too narrowly focused on

football hooliganism. Further, Jary et. al. they denounce the Centre as being too close to

policy making. That is because the Centre is dependent on public funding. (Jary et.

al:593). This polemic adds a bitter aftertaste to the article which is well written and

therefore it is a very useful account on the possibilities of cultural contestation done by

fanzines.

Duke (1991) again as Jary et. al. have done, expresses the need of an alternative

sociology of football that goes beyond the issue of hooliganism, but again as was the

case with Jary et.al. hooliganism was the main topic of the 1980s and thus had all the

attention. Duke therefore suggests a number of topics that seem to be interesting for

him. These include the modernization of football grounds in Britain in consequence of

the Taylor Report (1990), fanzines, comparative research and social demography. Apart

from these demands what makes this article helpful is a list of fanzines of English and

Welsh (Cardiff and Swansea) fanzines. The paucity of information, including the

absence of a list of Scottish fanzines, is perhaps unfortunate.

Giulianotti's (1997) article about fanzines related to Aberdeen FC in Scotland

highlights the Scottish perspective on football fanzines. What attracts attention is the

fact that the emergence of football fanzines in England and Scotland has the same

causes and roots. Both scenes developed in the mid 1980s after the biggest tragedies in

British football, Heysel and Bradford in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989. This

constitutes an interesting fact as the cause for these tragedies was specifically English,

yet the reaction to these causes affected the whole of Britain. Therefore the development

of fanzines is connected to national as well as local causes. Further, Giulianotti gives an

insight into the local culture of Aberdeen and the role of fanzines attached to the club

within it. This example shows how football fanzines can act on a local stage and allows

conclusions for clubs and cities similar to Aberdeen. Although the producers of fanzines

exercise a certain power in the field of football, according to Giulianotti they are well

aware of their powerlessness compared to the club, the players and authorities and

"...yet are still laden with an explicit humour, irony and invective about their own

identities..." (p. 214). He contradicts himself in terms of power later when he highlights

the role of fanzines in the sacking of two managers of the club in the early 1990s. The

article is therefore useful only in cases similar to Aberdeen, a city with one club, which

has seen better times and a media biased negatively towards fans and supporters.

Another account on Scottish football, this time on Celtic FC is delivered by

Boyle (1994). He follows questions as to what extent football clubs as cultural

institutions are important for shaping specific identities and how this "...process is

being shaped by wider cultural agendas that enjoy prominence within local regional or

national spaces..." (p. 74). In another article that concentrates on several clubs, here

Manchester United FC, Arsenal FC and West Ham United FC, Brown (1998) examines

the power and influence fans achieved in the mid and late 1980s. He raises questions of

regulation and control, but also of participation and exclusion that followed the Taylor

Report of 1990 (1990). Further, he mentions the FSA and the NFFSC (National

Federation of Football Supporters Clubs) as the two main supporters associations and

fanzines to gain control and influence in the game. Although the focus is not primarily

put on fanzines, Brown includes them into this article as an important part of fan culture

and fan democracy.

Dunning (1999, p.125-6; 135) mentions football fanzines only shortly in the

context in the commercialization of football and does not deliver any explanations on

the topic itself, rather his focus is on the development of sport and its sociology. He

produces a critique of Haynes in which he criticizes him for failing to examine the

social backgrounds of the fanzine writers. For Dunning the fanzines are part of what he

calls the "football figuration" (p.126), thus they have an influence and power, though

only to a small extent and they are part of the football industry (p.126). A deeper

examination into football fanzines is delivered by Giulianotti (1999) who describes the

background of the people involved in writing football fanzines and gives a historical

paragraph about the circumstances that led to the emergence of football fanzines in the

UK, but he does not specify his thoughts any clearer. He links them to trends in social

history that are rooted in the 1960s. Further, Giulianotti identifies fanzine writers as

white-collar workers who tend to have a university degree.

Boyle and Haynes (2000) deliver a book on sport being part of popular culture

which is influenced by the media and vice versa. The authors deliver a history of the

media-sport relationship emphasizing the time from 1989 to 1998 as the decade that

brought the most dramatic changes in sports coverage in the media. The book does not

focus solely on televised sports but also covers the development of sport in newspaper

journalism including the internet although at the time of writing the internet has not had

its widespread influence that it enjoys now. Here, Boyle and Haynes start an outlook

into the future of sport broadcasting on the internet. In this respect they place football

fanzines as a representation of British football fans and describe the media perception of

fans which has changed significantly since the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 (Boyle,

Haynes, 2000:198). They also describe football fans as historians which is suitable as a

description.

Two studies, one English, one German (Robson, 2000; Schmidt-Lauber, 2004)

that focus on a particular club. The English club is Millwall FC, the German is

Hamburg-based St. Pauli FC. Both deliver an insight into fan groups from both clubs

and how each group of fans identify themselves in relation to their club. Both studies

examine the strong local ties that the clubs have to their geographic locality as well as

investigate how groups of fans mainly recruit other fans from other areas of the towns

the clubs are located in. Both focus on the myth that surrounds each club making these

clubs particular and thus worth studying. The myth of Millwall FC constitutes itself

from the reputation of Millwall being the club of the dock workers. The myth is built

around images of masculinity and hard ship based on the life in the Docklands of East

London. Even comparisons to the London of Charles Dickens were made and seemed to

be appropriate (Robson:23). The image of Millwall supporters is that of being

hooligans. Robson produces a number of quotations from other fanzines to underline

this perception. The quotes in these fanzines refer to the supporters of the club as being

savage, nasty and malicious (Nottingham Forest's

Forest Forever). The Arsenal fanzine

The Gooner hopes that Arsenal supporters returning back safely in one piece after an

FA-Cup match against Millwall (Robson:22).

Robson followed Millwall FC over the time of two seasons (1995/6 and 1996/7)

and conducted an ethnographical research about the fans and supporters of the club. He

coins the term `millwallism' to underline the particularity of the club; and under this

topic Robson conducts research into locality of the club and the habitus of the fans. He

discovers strong local ties between the club and the area where it is located, South-East

London. Whereas Robson followed the club personally and thus did the field work on

his own, Schmidt-Lauber initiated a study group focused on the Hamburg-based

football club St. Pauli FC. In both cases the involvement and detachment of the

researchers is a factor to be paid attention to when looking at the concluded results.

Schmidt-Lauber states in order to prevent too much involvement during field research

whenever the group of researchers attended a game (away or at home), one person was

randomly picked to supervise the others to ensure the observations did not become too

subjective. The book of Schmidt-Lauber covers topics such as the construction of the

media image of the club, the politically correct fan and the question of what makes a

true fan. For the club and more importantly for the fans the image that should be created

and uphold is that of an underdog. Compared to the `big' club in Hamburg Hamburger

SV, St. Pauli FC is certainly an underdog in sporting terms; but rather underdog is

meant here to establish the image of the only club in Germany with supporters who are

entirely left orientated. Also, the nickname of the club "Freibeuter der Liga" translated

from German would describe the team as pirates of the league. Together with a pirate

flag it seems the work on the image is fairly progressed. The image of pirates was

established in the 1980s when Hamburg hosted an alternative community which entirely

supported the club. Although this community does not exist any longer due to

redevelopment in the dock area of Hamburg, the image created at that time is

maintained until recent days.

But, as Schmidt (2004) conducts, does marketing and the image attributed to St.

Pauli FC not imply a contradiction? The image of an underdog used to promote the club

without estranging the supporters who are mainly recruited from outside the main

stream culture? As the study continues it becomes clear that the club followed a

sophisticated strategy using words that would describe the club best. These were fierce,

rebellious, self-deprecating, cosmopolitan and provocative. Therefore, the myth and the

media image of St. Pauli FC do not contradict but support each other (Schmidt,

2004:172).

Included into the study is a chapter on political football fans. The book further

deals with a description of what is a true fan, particularly being a fan of St. Pauli FC.

For both clubs the locality is of importance. For Millwall it is "the land that time forgot"

(Robson, p.19), that is, South-East London and in particular the former Docklands of

London and for St. Pauli it is the Reeperbahn and the surrounding estate, the red light

district in Hamburg.

The attempt to establish ties with the surrounding neighbourhood can be

attributed to every club. The relationship between football fans and football clubs has

most extensively been researched by Bale (1982, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2003).

Bale explores the stadium as a sacred place, as a scenic space, as home and as a tourist

place (Bale, 1991:131-134). The emphasis in Bale's writing is on the stadium that

combines people in either religious fulfilment in which case the stadium is a substitute

for the cathedral or as a place that fans consider their homes. The German tennis player

Boris Becker once referred to the centre court at Wimbledon as his living room. This

highlights that not only for football fans but also for athletes sports grounds have a

meaning that goes beyond the meaning sports grounds are originally designed for:

sporting events.

A theoretical point of view on football fandom is given by Redhead (1997).

Post-fandom and fan culture are his main points of research into which he has

conducted a study. He mainly draws his theories from cultural studies to describe the

transformation of football culture. Completely without mentioning football Harris

(1998) edited a study that focuses on fans and draws possible theories and conclusions

from the chapters.

Harris (1998) discovers that research on fandom is a relatively new topic not

only within sociology. The book follows questions such as what produces fandom and

what specific practices are associated with it and what role fans play in social and

cultural processes to underline the fact that fans and fandom is not sufficiently explored

as an academic topic yet. In the introduction she asks how an audience is constituted by

saying that these in and of themselves do not exist anywhere, that audiences and fans

are fluid, mutable, dynamic and interactive and that they do not hold still (Harris:3).

Although the word fan and its connotation are well known within society it is surprising

that fans and fandom are "profoundly untheorized" (Harris:4). Harris mentions

Bourdieu and deCerteau as sources to explain fans and the special relationship between

hierarchies of power and alternative uses of cultural resources which provide a basis for

discussing fandom (Harris:5). Unfortunately there are no accounts on sports or football

fans, mostly the books focuses on television fans, therefore any theory deducted from

the articles are hardly suitable for any explanation on football fans.

Weighing up all kinds of audiences, including football audiences and fans

equally, Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) deliver a range of explanations for

audiences and fans. They classify three types of audiences: the simple audience, the

mass audience and the diffused audience; the first one being that of attending a football

match, a rock concert, theatre plays, films and festivals. Mass audiences are created

through the help of the mass media while being a member of a diffused audience means

that attending any form of performance is constitutive for everyday life. That means that

for many people it is music that is constantly playing in the background or the television

running without being noticed at all, but only for the noise of it to be there. Thus, any

performance has become a "background noise" (p.69). In contrast to that, simple

audiences such as attending a football match are focused on the performance on the

pitch and events with a simple audience are exceptional (p.44). Although delivering a

chapter on fans, Abercrombie and Longhurst still see sports fans "as misbehaving at a

sports match" (p.122); thus the opinion seems not to have changed. It does not become

clear whether this point of view that football fans behave deviant is the point of view

held by the authors.

2.2. Literature on Theories

From the theoretical point of view a separation needs to be made in the

literature. The first part will give an overview on the literature about cultures of

memory, while the second part will deal with theories from sociology.

In the field of memory as in every field of scientific research the theories are

varying and opposing. This allows for a fruitful discussion on the topic of memory. The

literature on collective memory is widespread and has its origins in the writings of the

French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (1925, 1950, 1992) but the work only became

popular 40 years after his death in 1945. Nowadays his work is considered as having

laid the foundation for any study carried out in the field of collective memory. For

Halbwachs

"...memory is not given but rather a socially constructed notion...while

the collective memory endures and draws strength from its base in a

coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who

remember.

" (1992: 22).

Halbwachs examines memory in different contexts such as in dreams, language,

and the localization of memory, the collective memory of the family, religious

collective memory and memory of social classes. Starting with dreams, Halbwachs

examined that "no real and complete memory every [sic] appears in our dreams as it

appears in our waking state." (1992:41) Thus, the mind is most removed from society

whilst we are dreaming. That does not mean that dreams are not structured, they simply

appear to make less sense than the daily matters that occupy one's mind, although most

often we can still recall them (1992:44). Further, whenever someone recovers his or her

own past it is not that this happens without a certain expectation. That is in the case of a

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Title

Cultures of Memory in Football Fanzines. A Content Analysis

Author

Christoph Wagner (Author)

Year

2014

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V312722

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English

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Cultures Football Fanzines

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Christoph Wagner (Author)

, 2014, Cultures of Memory in Football Fanzines. A Content Analysis, Hamburg, Bedey Media GmbH, https://www.anchor-publishing.com/document/312722

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