HKJ fandom and its symbolic definitions
Studies on football fandom find that, in the case of engaged fans, team support is a significant, continuous and stable part of their identity (Ben Porat 2010). Football fandom is seen, by the fans themselves, as a lifetime practice, rooted in family traditions or local context. This feature of fandom is usually stressed to highlight its opposition to the commercialization and globalization of football (Giulanotti, 2004) Furthermore, fandom stability stands out against the background of a fluid, or a liquid, modernity. (Bauman 2005, Best 2013).
However, fandom is rooted not only in tradition, but also, and in the main, in the everyday and the institutionalized social life of the fans. Fandom …show more content…
Rather, fandom practices and meanings, including "traditions", are constantly updated by the fans' reflexive efforts to deal with conflicts and problems woven into their daily lives.
The case of Hapoel Katamon highlights the importance of reflexivity in generating collective symbolic definitions, and the eventual formation of a collective identity. HKJ fans set themselves to form a football club that would represent their aspirations, and to become its fans, in ways that would express their perceptions and values. The monitoring and self-awareness of those fans played a key role in forging their collective identity.
The fans' aspirations and values are best described as specific attempts to transcend the divisions created by the particular and primordial definitions of identity in Israel. Social trends display a high level of economic inequality, weak inter-groups solidarity, erosion of the welfare state and decreasing levels of trust in social and government institutions. In the urban space of Jerusalem those trends are particularly marked, due to the different status of social and national groups in the city, and its high levels of poverty (National Insurance Institute Annual Report, 2015). Everyday life in the city is constituted and negotiated along the overlapping cleavage lines of nationality (Jews – Arabs), ethnicity (Oriental Jews – Ashkenasi …show more content…
HKJ started playing during a period of rising public awareness to the effects of economic policy and privatization on welfare and social solidarity. Thus, establishing a fan-owned club by a number of activists manifested, not only a wish to save their team, but also echoed a set of ideas and projects taking shape in the public sphere. Those ideas eventually lead to the outburst of the social protest of July - August 2011, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest against economic
Studies on football fandom find that, in the case of engaged fans, team support is a significant, continuous and stable part of their identity (Ben Porat 2010). Football fandom is seen, by the fans themselves, as a lifetime practice, rooted in family traditions or local context. This feature of fandom is usually stressed to highlight its opposition to the commercialization and globalization of football (Giulanotti, 2004) Furthermore, fandom stability stands out against the background of a fluid, or a liquid, modernity. (Bauman 2005, Best 2013).
However, fandom is rooted not only in tradition, but also, and in the main, in the everyday and the institutionalized social life of the fans. Fandom …show more content…
Rather, fandom practices and meanings, including "traditions", are constantly updated by the fans' reflexive efforts to deal with conflicts and problems woven into their daily lives.
The case of Hapoel Katamon highlights the importance of reflexivity in generating collective symbolic definitions, and the eventual formation of a collective identity. HKJ fans set themselves to form a football club that would represent their aspirations, and to become its fans, in ways that would express their perceptions and values. The monitoring and self-awareness of those fans played a key role in forging their collective identity.
The fans' aspirations and values are best described as specific attempts to transcend the divisions created by the particular and primordial definitions of identity in Israel. Social trends display a high level of economic inequality, weak inter-groups solidarity, erosion of the welfare state and decreasing levels of trust in social and government institutions. In the urban space of Jerusalem those trends are particularly marked, due to the different status of social and national groups in the city, and its high levels of poverty (National Insurance Institute Annual Report, 2015). Everyday life in the city is constituted and negotiated along the overlapping cleavage lines of nationality (Jews – Arabs), ethnicity (Oriental Jews – Ashkenasi …show more content…
HKJ started playing during a period of rising public awareness to the effects of economic policy and privatization on welfare and social solidarity. Thus, establishing a fan-owned club by a number of activists manifested, not only a wish to save their team, but also echoed a set of ideas and projects taking shape in the public sphere. Those ideas eventually lead to the outburst of the social protest of July - August 2011, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest against economic