The Neoliberalization of Football

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Sam Dubal commercialization of the beautiful game

The neoliberalization of football: Rethinking neoliberalism through the

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The neoliberalization of football: Rethinking neoliberalism through the commercialization of the beautiful game

Sam DubalHarvard Medical School, USA

AbstractThis ethnographic study explores how football (soccer) fandoms respond to neoliberal reforms, adding to a growing debate on the nature of neoliberalism by scholars such as geographer David Harvey, sociologist Nikolas Rose, and anthropologist Anna Tsing. In order to critique spatially and temporally coherent characterizations of neoliberalism, brief case analyses of fan reactions to the commercialization of Brazilian club Corinthians and English club Manchester United are used. Specifically, comparative insights from fans’ negotiation of market-based restructurings reveal how neoliberal ‘flows’ are implemented and experienced differently in different places. Particularities in these flows are employed to disassemble hegemonic and universal visions of neoliberalism through the notion of friction.

Keywordscitizenship, commodification, consumption, football, neoliberalism

Introduction

Anthropological understandings of neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, for scholars such as David Harvey, is a global hegemonic doctrine, capa-ble of enacting homogenizing structural change through deregulation, privatization, and other recognizable transformations. Originating as a theory of political thought empha-sizing ‘freedom’, neoliberalism has developed into a mode of governance that shifts social responsibility from the state to individual, corporate, and NGO actors. Marked by protection of property rights, the growth of free markets, and the cutback of the welfare state, among other reforms, neoliberalism emerged during a period of stagflation in the

Article

Corresponding author:Sam Dubal, Harvard Medical School, 260 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115, USAEmail: [email protected], [email protected]

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

45(2) 123–146© The Author(s) 2010

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124 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45(2)

1970s as a possible solution to recessions and energy crises (Harvey, 2005). It has since expanded globally to reshape everyday values and to govern conduct in diverse fields, including popular culture and sport.

Harvey’s theory is widely cited and useful in conceptualizing an intricate set of transfor-mations, ideologies, and modes of governance, yet it has its limits. Through anthropologi-cal ethnographic fieldwork, I critique the politico-economic determinism of neoliberalism that he offers. Harvey (2005) describes neoliberalism as being ‘hegemonic as a mode of discourse’ (p. 3), claiming that ‘there has everywhere been an emphatic turn towards neo-liberalism in political-economic practices and thinking’ (p. 2). He explicitly defines neolib-eralization as a ‘political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites’, orchestrated by ruling upper classes (p. 19). Explaining a global presence of neoliberal governance, he argues, ‘The general progress of neoliberalization has . . . been increasingly impelled through mechanisms of uneven geo-graphical development. Successful states or regions put pressure on everyone else to follow their lead’ (p. 87). While the ‘flow’ of neoliberal thought and policies undoubtedly includes elite actors and transcends national boundaries, treating neoliberalism as an ‘encompassing hegemonic project’ ascribes remarkable and perhaps undeserving spatial and temporal coherence to this transnational phenomenon (Hoffman et al., 2006).

Recognizing the limits of Harvey’s rigid understanding of neoliberalism, we must ask, as we did of globalization, how these neoliberal ‘flows’ are implemented and expe-rienced differently in different places. Beyond demonstrating its local specificities, we must place neoliberalism itself at the center of our studies. Hoffman et al. (2006) note that ‘although ever more anthropological studies are concerned with neoliberalism, there have been few steps made toward an anthropology of neoliberalism . . . in which the very definition of neoliberalism is put in question and made an object of investigation’ (p. 9). Through this ethnographic study of what I term the ‘neoliberalization’ of football (soc-cer), I seek to refine our definition of neoliberalism by examining how seemingly identi-cal processes transforming the game are implemented and experienced differently in Brazil and England. By examining football fans’ reactions to the implementation of mar-ket-driven governance, it becomes clear that ‘neoliberalization’, like globalization, does not homogenize the world into a singular neoliberal society, nor do neoliberal ‘flows’ traverse national borders freely. Rather, neoliberal governing principles are included and excluded, embraced and negotiated across local landscapes, originating through specific actors and taking shape through different mechanisms. It is within this negotiation, or friction, that a culture of neoliberalism develops. In combining studies of sport and of neoliberalism, I use comparative ethnographic insights to suggest a reinterpretation of neoliberalism. I collected my observations from June to August 2007, when I spent time in São Paulo and Manchester surveying and interviewing (in semi-structured, taped interviews) approximately 80, mostly young to middle-aged male fans of Corinthians and Manchester United/FC United. The work was undertaken with the permission of the management of both Gaviões da Fiel (Corinthians’ primary supporter club) and FC United, and most informants were tied to these organizations as members. Work in São Paulo was coordinated primarily at the Gaviões da Fiel community center in the district of Bom Retiro, while work in Manchester was coordinated both electronically through fans’ forums and personally at FC matches. The methods were executed with the aim of



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including a diverse yet dedicated group of supporters within the sample. Accompanying fans to matches, protests, pubs, and organizational meetings – all rich zones of social production – I gained a sense of the political struggles facing fans today and the various ways in which they respond. Although direct engagement with club management and players was considered, such data would not significantly affect the supporters’ opinions and perceptions of their lived realities. Future ethnographic work is needed to understand the positioning of these other crucial actors within this web of power.

I preface my argument with two qualifying notes. First, the two cases were chosen on the basis of their high-profile takeovers marked by publicized, strong opposition within vastly different politico-economic and cultural circumstances. Other cases, including Chelsea, Liverpool, and Aston Villa, were considered, but supporters’ opposition to these takeovers was not as manifest as those of Manchester United/FC United and Corinthians. While these cases may not be representative of broader supporter responses to the com-mercialization of the sport, they serve as illustrative examples to advance a more nuanced theoretical understanding of the concept and practice of neoliberalism. Of course, fans’ experiences of and attitudes towards neoliberalization differ widely, even within these two cases. Many embrace the game’s neoliberalization, while others detest it; in my accounts, I compare particular sets of fans’ experiences in Brazil and England as a way of re-examining the nature of neoliberalism. Second, to the extent that fans organize into communities around politico-economic and social issues, fandom is also highly gen-dered and strongly associated with constructions and performances of masculinities (Giulianotti, 1999). While women do participate actively in fan organizations, these groups are largely dominated by men.

The commercialization of footballWhat is widely recognized as the ‘commercialization’ of world football at the elite pro-fessional level is one aspect of what I term the ‘neoliberalization’ of football – the post-1970s infusion of a loose set of market-driven ideals that have pushed profit-making to the foreground of the global game, affecting fans and fan culture from São Paulo to Manchester, from Tokyo to Moscow. Marked most recently by a string of high-profile takeovers of local clubs – including Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea, Media Sports Investment’s purchase of Corinthians, and American investor Malcolm Glazer’s takeover of Manchester United – the commercialization of football, as journalist David Conn (1997) reminds us, is in fact nothing new. For example, as early as the 1880s, English clubs had been illegally paying players at a time when the sport was still amateur. What is unique about the current era of commercialization is its dra-matic impact on fans and fan culture.

The effects of modern commercialization have markedly transformed global fans-capes. Facing rising ticket prices, many fans in both England and Brazil have stopped attending matches. As a result, many stadia (especially in England) have been gentrified, replacing the traditional fan-base of mainly working-class supporters with a largely mid-dle- and upper-class group. Recent technologies such as satellite television have made it possible to watch English games in almost every country, expanding the fan-bases of elite English clubs to include millions from around the world and increasing club profits




through pay-per-view TV revenue. Many fans in both England and Brazil feel alienated from their club’s now wealthy players while perceiving their own transformation from supporters into consumers. In this transformation, traditional supporters clash with newer supporters, who ascribe different meanings to their fandom.

While many fans have been disenfranchised and disaffected by the recent commer-cialization of football, others have had different experiences. Fans of Chelsea, for exam-ple, have enjoyed an upturn in their clubs’ fortunes, and many fans praise Abramovich for improving their league position. Others, especially fans based abroad, have not felt the full effects of commercialization, unaffected by rises in ticket prices or the decline in the quality of the match atmosphere. Most have also not experienced corporate takeovers firsthand; fans of elite German clubs own at least 51 percent of their teams, while fans of many Spanish clubs, including FC Barcelona (a club widely seen as a democratic model by many Corinthians and FC United fans), fully own their teams. Further studies are needed to learn how these fans understand the recent commodification of the sport.

Beyond commercialization: The neoliberalization of footballMany scholars have studied this recent form of the commercialization of football in vari-ous forms (Brown, 1998; Conn, 1997; King, 2003; Lee, 1998; Morrow, 2003; Sandvoss, 2003). Yet commercialization has not yet been explicitly considered as part of the broader project of neoliberalism. Table 1 gives a useful comparison that identifies the ways in which aspects of commercialization are linked to larger neoliberal processes.

Table 1 reveals that the commercialization of football is not an isolated phenomenon, but in fact an extension of neoliberal governance into the arena of sport. Like ‘political neoliberalism’, ‘football neoliberalism’ arose out of crisis. In England, following the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster and out of a genuine concern for the safety of fans, the Home Office dictated that all English stadia were to be converted into all-seaters, eliminating the standing terraces popular with generations of fans and leading to increased ticket prices. Perhaps unintentionally, these changes allowed the public ritual of football to be transformed into a profitable business, climaxing in the formation of the breakaway English Premier League – a collusion of profit-seeking club chairmen and TV executives, aided by English football’s governing body, the Football Association, or FA (Conn, 1997). In Brazil, on the other hand, changes in the game arose out of a desire to ‘professionalize’ the financial administration of clubs, which was, and continues to be, rife with corruption (Gordon and Helal, 2001). As a result of these changes, originally aimed to root out fraud and stabilize club finances, ticket prices keep increasing in Brazilian stadia, even as attendances fall. Clubs remain in debt, forced to cheaply sell their best young players off to Europe to service their balance, or, in the case of Corinthians, enter into often dangerous partnerships with foreign investors.

How did the English Football Association and its Brazilian counterpart, the CBF – football’s equivalents of the state – respond to these crises? The English FA adopted a neoliberal method of ‘governing without governing’ by promoting market solutions as an alternative mode of governance. The English FA allowed clubs to bypass Rule 34, which precluded profit-making by banning payments to club directors and previously discour-aged investors from exploiting the game (Conn, 1997). Clubs were free to float on the



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stock market, beginning with Tottenham in 1983, and profits soon began to flow in (King, 2003). The CBF, on the other hand, was united in its opposition to Pele’s Law, a proposal by the famous footballer (and then Minister of Sport) Pelé during the adminis-tration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who led a privatization program in Brazil in the mid-1990s. The law allowed clubs to create their own league as a private legal entity outside the CBF’s jurisdiction, in addition to allowing clubs to become corporations (Castro, 2002). Pelé’s Law was, as Franklin Foer (2004) describes, a ‘set of IMF-like reforms for soccer, requiring clubs to operate as transparent capitalist ventures, with open books and accountable managers’ (p. 127). Clubs vehemently opposed the legisla-tion, which also gave players greater labor mobility, contributing to the exodus of young players and the alienation of fans from players (Sader, 2004). Investors such as Media Sports Investment (MSI) soon began to enter Brazilian football.

In this neoliberalization of football, clubs – traditionally imagined by fans as belong-ing to communities rather than individual owners – were ‘privatized’. Historically, clubs were first formed by groups of university students, professionals, and workers, among others – not by individuals or businessmen (Mason, 1980, 1995). The word ‘club’ signi-fied a form of social inclusion of its members and fans (and the implicit exclusion of others). As historian Tony Mason (1980) notes, English clubs contributed ‘to the inten-sity and diffusion of [a] local consciousness . . . particularly among working people’, where workers ‘helped to feel that they belonged to a community by the activities of the local football team and their attachment to that team’ (p. 235). In Brazil, many clubs were

Table 1. Neoliberalism in football and politics from the 1970s to the present

Neoliberal football Neoliberal politics

Originated in response to domestic football crises (hooliganism and crowd control in England in the 1980s; club debts and mismanagement in Brazil in the 1990s)

Originated in response to economic stagflation and other crises from the 1970s to the 1990s

English Football Association and Brazilian government changed rules to allow clubs to become profit-oriented businesses

Brazilian and British politicians changed laws to allow for the privatization of national industries

Teams ‘belong’ to the fans, who feel a sense of public ownership over them

A nation’s public transportation, mineral resources, and other industries belong to the public

Teams are sold off to the highest bidder, transferring (usually) from local fans to global investors

National industries are sold off to the highest bidder, transferring from public to private ownership

Fan groups organize to protest the club’s sale Citizens organize to protest the sale of national industries

Fans’ interests ignored in favor of private accumulation

Citizens’ interests ignored in favor of private accumulation

G14 and the Clube dos 13, groups of the world’s richest clubs, lobby to promote market interests and increased club profits

G8, a group of the world’s richest countries, lobby to promote market interests




(and continue as) elite athletic clubs (Damo, 2002), but are nonetheless societies with available access to membership. Those who could not afford or did not want to be club members began to form independent fan communities in the 1940s (Mason, 1995). Questions of membership, inclusion, and class, as well as claims to possession over the club, are re-emerging as new problems in today’s form of commercialized football.

In the privatization of elite teams, club ‘ownership’ has been transferred from inclu-sive fan communities to exclusive wealthy businessmen. There is no doubt that in earlier periods, club chairmen in both Brazil and England sought to increase their capital – but for them, as Bourdieu (1984) would point out, capital was not always a matter of money. Conn notes that ‘directors spoke of their job as ‘‘custodians of the club for the people’’, and almost none saw football as a means of making money’ (Conn, 1997: 128–9). Often, chairmen gained cultural capital from their positions, enhancing their images within their communities. Similarly, in Brazil, while many chairmen profited from their clubs finan-cially (legally or illegally), being a chairman also became a springboard for launching political careers (Humphrey, 1994). Owners were generally also fans, recognizing that clubs ‘belonged’ to the fans, who paid the players’ wages and sustained the club finan-cially. During the course of the game’s neoliberalization, this tacit understanding of the public ‘ownership’ of football often collapsed. During Malcolm Glazer’s takeover of Manchester United, even fans holding merely sentimental shares in the club were forced to sell to Glazer, who assumed total control of the club. While never formally public, football clubs always assumed the shape of public institutions; however, like many national industries in the UK and Brazil, they have recently fallen into private hands.

Once investors saw market potential in football, the fallout predictably mirrored the condition of neoliberal intervention. Teams worldwide have been sold off to the highest bidders, reflecting the sale of Brazilian and British national industries. Many fans – ‘citi-zens’ of their clubs – have protested against selective takeovers as many citizens have organized against privatization. In the new governance of football, many supporters feel that private accumulation is given precedence over fan interests, just as neoliberal initia-tives, especially in the UK, are instituting the rollback of welfare programs and social spending. Unions of elite clubs, including the Brazilian Clube dos 13 (Club of Thirteen) and the recently disbanded European G14, promote market interests in order to secure increased profits; they were clearly modeled on the G8, the group of the world’s richest countries and leading proponents of political projects such as trade liberalization.

There can be no question that neoliberal projects have significantly altered the land-scape of world football. By examining the ethnographic cases of two clubs recently taken over by foreign investors – Corinthians and Manchester United – we can witness how seemingly identical neoliberal transformations have been implemented, experienced, and negotiated in two regions with starkly different political, economic, and cultural histories. Through this comparative approach, we put ‘neoliberalism’ at the heart of our inquiry in order to cultivate a more nuanced knowledge of its limits, variations, and inconsistencies.

Corinthians, Gaviões da Fiel, and the Movimento Fora DualibOn a scorching July day in South America’s largest city, Corinthians have forgotten how to play football. Unimpressed with their team’s 3–0 loss at home to the league’s worst



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team Náutico, irate fans begin chanting, ‘Oh-ohh-oh, Dualib the thief out!’ (‘O,ooo,o, fora Dualib ladrão!’), urging Corinthians president Alberto Dualib to resign. Whistles and boos rain down on the players from the upper reaches of the stadium.

After leaving the stands, we head for Dualib’s house, meeting about 10 other cars in a nearby square. Julio, a teenage member of the movement against Dualib, buys 200 eggs at a nearby market. The other drivers, angry and impatient, rush ahead of us while organizer Bruno calls members of the press to inform them of the impending protest. We pull up towards the house and watch as fans launch firecrackers over the home’s tall stone wall in this wealthy neighborhood. Julio rushes the eggs out to the 200 fans present, and as Dualib’s bemused security guards look on, they throw them angrily at the house while screaming:

‘The peace is over – your life will become hell!’ (‘Acabou a paz, a sua vida vai virar um inferno!’)

‘No, it’s not easy to take – I’ve never seen security for a thief!’ (‘Não é mole, não! Eu nunca vi segurança para ladrão!’)

‘Dualib, fuck off! Corinthians doesn’t need you!’ (‘O Dualib, vai se fuder! O Coringão não precisa de você!’)

‘No, it’s not easy to take – Dualib sold Corinthians!’ (‘Não é mole, não! O Dualib vendeu o Coringão!’)

As media and police arrive, the protests continue, and the pressure on Dualib grows.

‘Dualib sold Corinthians!’: The MSI-Corinthians partnership and fan resistanceIn December 2004, Corinthians’ board announced a 10-year ‘partnership’ with MSI, an unknown investment firm led by Kia Joorabchian and Boris Berezovsky (Bellos, 2004). In return for complete control of the club’s football operations, MSI promised US$35 million to invest in players and to finance Corinthians’ enormous debt, which had risen to upwards of US$20 million under President Alberto Dualib’s administration. Although many fans and Corinthians board members initially opposed MSI’s takeover, their voices were ignored following the arrival of several star players, including Argentineans Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. The MSI-financed team bore fruit in 2005, winning the Brazilian championship.

Soon after, however, the partnership began to break down. Dualib and Joorabchian clashed, and Joorabchian took Tevez and Mascherano to England, hoping to sell them on for a profit. In July 2007, Berezovsky, Joorabchian, and Dualib were all indicted on charges of money laundering and gang formation, and Corinthians’ board voted to termi-nate the partnership. Under pressure from fans, including members of independent sup-porter groups (torcidas organizadas) Gaviões da Fiel (‘Hawks of the Faithful’) and the Movimento Fora Dualib (‘Dualib Out Movement’), Dualib and his administration resigned, leaving the club in even further debt. Amidst this political turmoil, the team finished 17th in the league and were relegated in December 2007. Although divided over MSI, fans were nearly united in opposition to Dualib. In addition to ‘selling’ the team to MSI, Dualib was deeply implicated in nepotism, corruption, unjustly changing club by-laws, and buying votes, allowing him to remain in power for 14 years (Vélez and Garcia,




2006). In spite of the many trophies won under Dualib’s administration, ethnographic work confirms that fans widely regard him as a thief, a dictator, and a self-interested businessman who stained their team.

Neoliberal intervention and the fans’ alienation from players and management

Today, football has become less about working with society, the question of being human, and is more commercial. Today, the commercial part is more prosperous than the love, the passion of the fan. With this commercialization, this globalization that’s taking [Brazilian] players abroad, you end up losing a bit of the character of football for the fan. (Renato, member of Gaviões da Fiel and Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra [MST], a Brazilian landless workers movement)

The MSI partnership was merely the latest episode in a series of neoliberal initiatives in Brazilian football that are distancing many fans from players and management, turning, as many supporters see it, fans into consumers and players into commodities. In the aftermath of Pele’s Law, and the transformation of clubs into for-profit corporations, ticket prices have increased to more than $11 (R$20), making attendance at games unaf-fordable for most working-class fans who have traditionally supported Corinthians. Clubs’ profits increasingly come from TV revenues as Corinthians games are broadcast across Brazil and occasionally abroad. ‘The fan who goes to the stadium isn’t worth anything anymore’, remarks Marcelo, a member of Gaviões in his mid-30s. ‘The clubs sell their anticipated TV quotas, so it’s more important for a club’s games to be on TV than to have 40, 50,000 fans inside the stadium.’

Although Corinthians remains a widely supported club with nearly 30 million fans, the club’s commercialization is increasingly transforming many fans’ passion for the club into a consumer desire. Renato notes, ‘Today, all fans are actually seen by the teams, the businesses, as consumers. They don’t care about our sentiment of love, of passion, of guts.’ Many fans imagine their consumption of Corinthians (through tickets, merchan-dise, and so forth) not as a consumer desire but as an expression of their passion and love for their team, identifying with a complex philosophy and common history of suffering known as Corinthianismo. While fans have not traditionally seen themselves as consum-ers, marketing directors now do and profit from what could be seen as blind brand loy-alty. In the midst of this recent reconfiguration of fans as consumers, Renato and others warn that commercialization is diminishing the fans’ love for the game, and ‘with this passion going away, the fan will also stop consuming’. Recent changes in Corinthians fans’ attitudes towards consumption, as discussed later, suggest an alternative future.

While fans’ passion or love for Corinthians is often displaced by commercial or busi-ness interests running the game, it is also increasingly seen to be disregarded by players with whom fans once strongly identified. Renato describes a commonly held nostalgia for players from the past:

The Brazilian still dreams of . . . the player who plays for the love, not for the money . . . Today, you see a player who plays for your arch-rivals for six months, and then six months later, he’s



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playing for your team. So, the commercial part of football is taking away the emotional part a little . . . You see the fan a bit more distant than before.

Seen by many fans as ‘mercenaries’, players often find it difficult to establish a sense of loyalty to the team or fans, who in turn become alienated from them. While players are perhaps partly to blame, this phenomenon must be situated within the greater football world order in which talented teenage Brazilian players are sold abroad, migrating towards larger European salaries while servicing the debts of their clubs (an important topic that I will revisit). Combined with management’s perceived treatment of fans as ‘consumers’, the alienation from players contributes to fans’ diminishing passion and sense of identity amidst current neoliberal intervention in football.

Gaviões da Fiel: Asserting control over club and communityAs my ethnographic data suggest, as fans grow distant from players and club manage-ment, they dedicate much of their time to fan movements and independent supporter organizations (torcidas organizadas). These groups have been described by fans them-selves as social movements or fan unions. As an element of Adam Brown’s (1998) notion of ‘fan democracy’, they may be seen as a means by which fans assert control over the club, identifying with the passion and sense of community that have been diminished by neoliberal initiatives. As community organizations with characteristics of NGOs, they take up projects to provide social support that the club and the state have failed to offer.

Gaviões da Fiel, Brazil’s largest torcida organizada with over 70,000 members, is one of these organizations. ‘Born to retake power’ from corrupt administrators, the group organizes protests to ensure that the club is administered clearly and honestly while dedi-cating itself to fan interests. For example, Gaviões has pressured the club to lower ticket prices and to provide more sanitary stadium facilities. Outside of football, the group coordinates a variety of community activities, including a samba school, feijoada (a common Brazilian meal) gatherings, children’s classes, and coat and food drives for a nearby favela. Many fans describe these community projects in direct opposition to the failures of state-provided services. Like most members of Gaviões, Adriano is dissatis-fied with and wary of the government:

The great majority of the people that come here [to Gaviões] are from the lower class, poor, right?

[Community work] is something that we like to do because we like society. The government doesn’t do anything for society, because for them . . . the less information a Brazilian citizen has, the better.

This deep distrust of corrupt government extends into action with a core group of mem-bers who are also activists with MST. During a recent Gaviões administration, the group’s leaders officially supported MST and the cause of the Cuban and Bolivian people while also condemning the Brazilian troop presence in Haiti and the war in Iraq (Ligabue, 2005). Rafael, a fan in his early 30s, insinuates that these actions on the part of a football




fan organization reflect the strong sense of ‘family’ that fans feel for each other, rooted in injustices suffered at the hands of a negligent state:

Our social character is a consequence of the injustices that we see and suffer from. We don’t receive anything from the state or any other organization, we make our social role . . . we’re a different torcida, concerned with the socio-political life of our country. Our organization has the objective of uniting all members of, all admirers of Sport Club Corinthians Paulista in a single chain, transforming this passion into a big family.

Transforming the passion they feel for their club into a heightened sense of ‘community’, fans participate in social work to protect the imagined community that the state does not.

Citizens of Brazil or citizens of Corinthians? Fans’ understandings of neoliberal politicsMembers of Gaviões, as citizens of both the Brazilian state and of the imagined Corinthians nation, are uniquely positioned to see the implementation and repercussions of deregulation and privatization in state government and in football. Many politicized fans understand neoliberal governance in the two arenas as identical. In their eyes, Dualib’s sale of Corinthians to MSI mirrored Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s sale of vari-ous national industries to private companies in the mid-1990s:

Dualib – we say that he’s Fernando Henrique, he accepts these privatizations, this neoliberalism. So much that he tried to . . . privatize Corinthians. (Renato)

It was a ‘privatization’ that happened in [the MSI] partnership, as it happened in the FHC government, where all of the evils were attributed to the acts of the state and virtues to private initiative. (Rafael)

Other less ‘politicized’ fans claim no interest in politics, but nonetheless, Renato claims, gain a political awareness of neoliberalism through football:

The people trade [their] political responsibility for football. Whatever political scandal [arises] – if there’s a football match, the guy isn’t into [the scandal] . . . he says, ‘Oh, Brazil is just like that.’ So we try to change this path . . . we believe that through football, someone can also gain a political awareness – even if he’s traded social responsibility for football. Even through football he can fight for his normal everyday life as a citizen.

In other words, fans’ understandings of national neoliberal politics are informed by their experiences as ‘citizens’ of the Corinthians nation, and vice versa. Alienated from the neoliberal Brazilian state, fans often jeer the national anthem before match kickoffs, identifying as Corinthian citizens rather than Brazilian citizens.

In fact, fans see Gaviões, whose members come from many socio-economic classes, as a haven where they are treated as equals and their social worth is recognized – some-thing fans are unable to find as Brazilian citizens. Rafael describes the distinction between being a citizen of Gaviões and a citizen of Brazil:



Dubal 133

There’s a phrase that really sums up what a person ‘discriminated’ by the state feels about being in the middle of the Fiel Torcida that can be put as a response to this question: ‘Is the Corinthians torcida the biggest? Is it the best? I don’t know, I’ve never counted. It’s different, I’m sure of that. What I also know is that even today I only find one of man’s most chased-after dreams in the middle of the Corinthians torcida. It’s equality.

Accordingly, the group particularly appeals to poor young men who are ignored by a state that cannot afford them education, transportation, or employment. Rafael remarks, ‘[Gaviões] carries out a duty that should be the state’s, creating an environ-ment in which the young person of low-income feels like a citizen, while for the gov-ernment he is just one more.’ Along with providing this sense of human worth associated with being a citizen, Gaviões also helps many fans understand themselves as political citizens. Paulo, a member of Gaviões and MST, remarks, ‘Today, I con-sider myself a politicized critic and mobilized citizen socially, thanks to life learning within Gaviões.’ While a Marxist analysis might approach sport as a capitalist tool, a form of superstructure distracting fans from realizing their class relations, the reality seems quite different for many fans. Through their education as citizens of the Corinthians Nation, fans gain political awareness of neoliberalism while actively seeking recognition of their equality and self-worth denied to them by the Brazilian state. Of course, these responses to a worldwide trend towards a neoliberal governance of football are specific to the conditions of Brazil and the megacity of São Paulo. How many of these similar projects are implemented and negotiated in Manchester – a wealthier city of the global North – among a group of Manchester United fans, is a different matter that demonstrates the need for a more nuanced understanding of neo-liberalism grounded in the idea of ‘friction’.

Manchester United and FC United

Manchester United vs Spurs

Passing ‘Love United, Hate Glazer’ stickers around the ground, I make my way to the front of Old Trafford, where on this warm August afternoon, United host Spurs. The Megastore, United’s official merchandise store, is teeming with fans carrying their purchases. As I walk toward the South Stand, I encounter a group of teenage girls in cocktail dresses heading to the luxurious corporate hospitality suites. At the rear of the 75,000-capacity stadium, the United team bus pulls up closely to the players’ entrance, which the stars pass through without acknowledging the adoring fans gath-ered to greet them.

I make my way to my £38 assigned seat. As kickoff looms and the stadium fills, the Stretford End raises its voices. Two or three supporters in the South Stand where I sit try to join in the singing, including a middle-class 10-year-old boy. His mother scolds him, hushing him up to conform to the quietness of his section, which sits in silence. At halftime, with the score 0–0, I glance through the United Review pro-gram, sponsored by Nike, AIG, Air Asia, and Budweiser, a ‘genuine supporter of Manchester United’, among other transnational corporations. United play poorly but win 1–0.




FC United vs Kidderminster

A month earlier, I traveled to Kidderminster to see my first FC United game. I met some FC fans on the train and joined them in the pub. At the small ground, we paid our £10 general admission tickets at the gate. The day’s attendance was 676, around 160 of whom were FC fans. There were neither fans in suits nor in dresses, and there was no shop to be found. Here we stood the entire game, sitting only briefly at halftime. FC songs boomed freely through the terrace, including some criticizing new Manchester United owner Malcolm Glazer and defender Rio Ferdinand:

Glazer, wherever you may be – you bought Old Trafford but you can’t buy me! I signed ‘not for sale’ and I meant just that! You can’t buy me, you greedy twat!

We don’t care about Rio! He don’t care about me! All I care about is watching FC! [Ferdinand was engaged in a notorious struggle to raise his already enor-mous wages, alienating fans who believe he is overpaid]

In this preseason friendly, FC managed a 1–1 draw with Kidderminster, a team two divi-sions above them. At fulltime, the players came over to the away stand to applaud the fans who traveled 75 miles to support them.

‘Not for $al£’: The Glazer takeover and fan resistanceOn 12 May 2005, American Malcolm Glazer bought one of the world’s richest clubs, Manchester United, for about £790 million. Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a businessman holding diverse investments, took the club off the stock market and plunged a previously rich United into approximately £525 million of debt. While some fans were unconcerned with or supported the Glazer takeover, many vehemently opposed it. Led by the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association (IMUSA), fans organized protests and encouraged boycotts of United’s sponsors. A group of deeply ‘disenchanted and disenfranchised’ supporters (FC United of Manchester, 2008), many affiliated with IMUSA, refused to renew their season tickets and formed their own mem-bers-owned club, Football Club United of Manchester, or FC United. FC is a semi-pro-fessional team that currently plays six divisions below Manchester United, averaging an attendance of nearly 3000 supporters.

For many FC fans, Glazer’s takeover was merely the latest event in the transforma-tion of ‘Manchester United Football Club’ into ‘Manchester United plc’. Glazer’s was not the first takeover attempt; chairman Martin Edwards attracted bids in the late 1980s (Conn, 1997) as well as the late 1990s, in between which he publicly floated the club while increasing ticket prices. The eventual takeover forced many fans holding signifi-cant and/or sentimental shares to sell them to Glazer. Combined with higher ticket prices, increased policing, the gentrification of football supporters, and the club’s glo-balization, the takeover ended many fans’ patience with the commercialization of the game. Not participating in these protests, other fans still pack Old Trafford every week to watch the 2008–09 English champions.



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From fan to consumer: The gentrification of Manchester United

With United’s emergence as one of the world’s richest and most popular football clubs, many fans see themselves transformed from football supporters of Manchester United Football Club into consumers of the Manchester United brand. Within this perceived transformation, what was seen as a traditionally working-class fan-base has been gentri-fied with a greater proportion of middle- and upper-class consumers, often via increased ticket prices. Once below a single pound, prices have soared since the establishment of the Premier League to around $60–$80 (£30–£40); since Glazer arrived, ticket prices have risen 11 percent per season (Conn, 2008). Unable or unwilling to pay these rising costs, many fans have been forced to give up their season tickets, which had often been held for decades within their families. Nigel, an FC fan in his late 30s who used to be a regular at United, explains United’s marketing strategy:

They don’t want just the average working-class man. They want people who will spend 150 pounds. They’ll have a meal, they’ll buy a bit of merchandise, they’ll take their clients. Football fans aren’t wanted anymore – not unless they’re very rich football fans and they can afford to give as much money as the corporates can.

While Manchester United is no longer a place where working-class fans can enjoy football at an affordable price, it is now a place where middle-class fans consume football. The ‘sign-value’ of the club, a means by which fans identify themselves in particular ways (King, 2003), has accordingly changed with the introduction of a mainly middle-class fan-base. The club has consciously re-signified itself as a fashionable, cosmopolitan brand through modifications such as removing the words ‘Football Club’ from the club crest. Creating this image was particularly important in attracting a new class of fans. As the crowds at Old Trafford and the Megastore suggest, consumption of the brand has its pleasures and passions for most of this new fan generation, who unlike previous generations are more likely to assert their fandom through the purchase of merchandise. A new middle-class habitus occu-pies the stadium: the removal of terraces, an increased security presence, and a general improvement of facilities in response to organized violence and difficulties with crowd con-trol has eased lingering (and mainly middle-class) fears over physical safety at matches.

For many working-class and/or older generations of fans, however, the introduction of this middle-class habitus has resulted in a decline in the quality of match atmospheres, now often described as ‘sanitized’. Thomas, a fan in his mid-40s who used to watch United before going to FC, remarks:

Middle classes – when you’re next to one, and you started singing, they’ll look at you as though you’re stupid. And if you’re surrounded by them, you won’t sing. Which is sad really – that’s what’s ruined the sport.

Many of those who do choose to sing while standing – a practice that was ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s and is still common when United play away – feel that they are forced to sit down by an aggressive police presence. After United manager Sir Alex




Ferguson criticized the lack of atmosphere, an IMUSA representative hit back, likening the stadium to a ‘police state’ where those who stand are ejected (Kay, 2008). Gentrification thus takes place both through the market and through policing.

Neoliberal reform and local supporters’ alienation from global playersIn addition to being priced out, traditional local fans have witnessed an enormous influx of wealth and talented foreign players in recent years. To a certain extent, the club’s suc-cess delights most supporters, who regularly enjoy watching the world’s best players from Brazil to Korea. Yet the benefits of United’s wealthy squad and worldwide fame are sometimes overshadowed by the deepening sense of alienation that ‘traditional’ local fans feel. Unable to identify with multimillionaire players and limited in their dreams of ever playing for their local team, many local fans can no longer identify with the club.

Like most players in the Premier League, United players are seen by many FC fans to be overpaid, earning upwards of $200,000 (£100,000) a week. FC fan Jonathan, who remembers his encounter with a legendary United player in the 1960s, contrasts current players with those from the past:

You saw them getting on a bus. The same bus as the fans, going home. Nobby Stiles was stood signing an autograph for me, and his dad would say, ‘Come on Nobby, we’ll miss this bus.’ And you wouldn’t get that now. Just, ‘go away little boy’, it would be that kind of attitude. And that’s how it’s moved away from the fans.

Many fans are also hesitant about the influx of foreign players. Although it would be easy to dismiss their misgivings as xenophobia, to do so would ignore the reality that local youth today, have little chance of playing for United1 (or any other Premier League team). Brian, a socialist FC fan in his late 30s, says:

I think there should be a cap on the amount of players that come from abroad. For me, it’s about giving the lad from Salford a genuine chance, when he’s 11 or 12, ‘this could be you’, you know? But now . . . there’s not a 0.1% chance of you making it.

Players’ high wages and the abundance of foreign players are perceived to dislocate United from Manchester, pulling the club apart from its local community roots and iso-lating its traditional fans.

Asserting control over club and community: Fan ownership and FC UnitedIn contrast to Manchester United, fan-owned FC United, a non-profit Industrial and Provident Society operated ‘for the benefit of the community’ (Financial Services Authority, n.d.), avoids commercialization whenever possible, electing not to carry spon-sors on their shirts. Reacting to the commercialization and globalization of United, FC also formed as a way for fans to recreate traditional practices they once enjoyed at United: standing with friends, singing, interacting with players,2 and counting on regular Saturday 3 pm kickoffs. Yet FC is also something novel – part of a new movement towards a ‘fan



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democracy’. Each fan is an owner and votes at the club’s annual general meeting; the club’s board is democratically elected. As part of a larger network of small, supporter-owned English clubs, FC provides a chance for fans to reclaim control over their game.

Among FC’s primary aims is to become involved in local community sport and other forms of social assistance, directly addressing the lack of social responsibility assumed by Manchester United and the state. In the eyes of many FC fans, Manchester United has become ‘dis-united’ from Manchester. Anthony, an FC fan who had been going to United since the 1960s, argues, ‘All football clubs should have its roots . . . they’re not Coca Cola. They’re not McDonalds. And they should be treated as an integral part of society and an integral part of the community.’ United, rather than promoting ties with the com-munity, has grown increasingly distant from fans in Salford and other parts of Greater Manchester. Though United participates in various charity events and community proj-ects, most fans feel that these are token gestures used to enhance United’s image. FC’s projects, on the other hand, are seen by many supporters to genuinely aim at social inclu-sion, responding to the state’s unwillingness to provide welfare support to immigrants and the working class as wealth gaps in the country increase. Kelly, one of many women who support FC, remarks, ‘I like the idea of being involved with young people at risk of offending . . . [of] building up social cohesion locally of football clubs that have been traditionally in quite run-down areas that need a lot of support.’ Standing in contrast to the global, expensive, and regulated Manchester United, FC directly addresses many of the local cultural and leisure voids that the neoliberal state has left to private enterprise.

Football as a right: Fans’ understandings of neoliberal politics

It’s like privatization of something that everybody should have. Fans shouldn’t be exploited to pay to give a businessman a rich profit . . . Football should be affordable to everybody, just like water should be there for everybody. (Nigel)

Like Corinthians fans, many FC fans’ understanding of neoliberal politics is informed by the neoliberalization of football, and vice versa. For many fans, as Nigel notes, football is like water – a basic right that everyone should have access to at an affordable price. Yet when football is taken away through increased prices and private ownership of such a ‘public’ local institution as United, fans often connect the dots between commercializa-tion and privatization. Trevor, a university student and FC fan in his early 20s, compares the privatization of buses to Glazer’s purchase of United:

It seems really strange that buses should be run by private companies . . . and that people who use the bus should have to pay for it. Surely it should be paid by progressive taxes and then it should be free . . . It just seems like a right has been taken away from you. And that seems the same with the takeover . . . I know that it never was strictly my club, but it felt like it was. And now it doesn’t feel like it is.

While never publicly owned, United grew as a city institution that belonged to the Mancunian people and constituted part of their identity.




For many FC fans, Glazer’s purchase of the club shattered that sense of United’s public identity, disregarding social welfare just as Thatcher did. Comparing Glazer and Thatcher, Trevor remarks, ‘Well, both sort of neoliberals aren’t they? I think Thatcher said, ‘‘there’s no such thing as society’’. And that’s what Glazer has implied about United – it’s just a business, that there isn’t a community behind the club.’ Brian recognizes Thatcher’s philosophy on private enterprise as the underpinning for Premier League football. ‘What happened in football, I think, is the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies. She just spread this culture where people lost their sense of com-munity. We’re not in a community anymore, we’re in it for ourselves.’ On the other hand, many fans are politically apathetic, indifferent to the legacies of Thatcherism. Yet, as Nigel points out, simply following United leads fans to understand neoliberal business practices:

Fans are a lot more clued up about things like business than they were 10 years ago, because we’ve had it rammed down our throats for so long by Man United. ‘We are a brand, we are a product.’ The fans have now taken an interest in, ‘What is a brand? What is a product? What is profit?’ And now fans are beginning to understand looking at it – ‘well hang on, 660 million pounds in debt? Who’s paying this debt off?’ And then they’re looking further into it, and you find out that it’s Man United supporters who are paying for it.

From politicized Militants identifying with FC as a leftist rebel club to politically uncon-cerned fans simply wanting the company of affordable beer, football, and friends, FC fans come to understand neoliberalism through both politics and football.

Neoliberal ‘flows’ in Brazilian and English footballThe two ethnographic cases necessitate a more nuanced understanding of what we refer to as ‘neoliberalism’. Focusing on three specific elements of market-based restructuring of football in Brazil and England, I examine how these elements circulate and are created as particularly ‘neoliberal’ within distinct cultural landscapes.

Neoliberal reform and fan citizenship: Brazilian consumers, English fansI have argued that the perceived transformation of fans into consumers has been a key element of the commodification of football for both Corinthians and United fans. For many Mancunian United fans, this transformation led to the gentrification of the club’s fan-base through rising ticket prices. Additionally, Glazer’s takeover required many fans to sell their United shares to the new owner. The club’s privatization and commodifica-tion disenfranchised many fans who could not afford to pay the exorbitant prices or were legally obliged to give up their shares, no longer considered valuable enough by the club and by other fans/consumers. The privatization of Corinthians and the commodification of the game in São Paulo, however, left many fans in a very different position from their counterparts in Manchester. With the club mired in debt and facing relegation, fans of the Movimento Fora Dualib proposed the ‘Corinthians Nation Project’ to enfranchise



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thousands of new ‘Corinthians Citizens’ by explicitly reconfiguring their relationship to the club as consumer-citizens. Below are excerpts from the project, which was presented to the club and ultimately implemented by its marketing department in February 2008:

Corinthians is not merely a social club, it’s a Nation and has to become treated as such . . . The Corinthians fan is our greatest asset and for a long time has not been given any attention . . . The connection between the fan and the institution of Corinthians should be closer and encouraged more. The Corinthiano [Corinthians fan] has to be a member of the club . . . has to officially be a CORINTHIANS CITIZEN.

The potential of 30 million consumers can no longer be ignored [emphasis added]. What we have to do is value our fans and encourage them to strengthen their connection to the club more every day. The first step for this is membership. The biggest partner of the club was always the fan, and with the growth of this partnership we shall have a self-sustaining and winning Corinthians.

Under this plan, fans pay reduced monthly fees to become ‘Corinthians Citizens’, gain-ing special benefits and discounts while having limited access to many of the social club’s amenities. In order to gain citizenship, fans actively identify as consumers.

Why do these two particular sets of fans have virtually opposite relationships to con-sumption and citizenship? Unlike United, which has thus far enjoyed relatively healthy profits and on-field success since the takeover, Corinthians’ attempt at privatization via the MSI takeover failed, leaving the club in even greater debt and the team struggling to sur-vive in the league. Many fans constantly find themselves in a border zone between reject-ing corrupting commercial influence in the game and embracing it as an opportunity for on-field success. As a result of Corinthians’ predicament, they came to regret the inability of the club to ‘exploit’ its brand among its own fans. Marcelo laments how Corinthians’ directors have apparently failed to capitalize financially on the club’s national reputation:

I don’t know if you know – the importance, the size of the Corinthians brand. If you buy a discarded cup, put the Corinthians symbol on it and say it’s official, it will sell more than any cup on the market. The Corinthians brand is poorly exploited . . . why? Because of [Dualib’s] administration! . . . If the professional side was doing a serious job, it would work out, but it doesn’t.

Alienated by their club but cognizant of the consuming potential of its fans to relieve the club’s debts, many Corinthians supporters see themselves as consumers to both claim a voice as citizens and to produce a championship-winning team. That Corinthians and United fans developed conflicting relationships to consumption following the privatiza-tion of their teams suggests that neoliberalism is not as hegemonic as it is often por-trayed. Neoliberal forms of governance can, as in the United case, disenfranchise and disaffect fans who often have no say in how this governance comes into being; however, these very same forms of governance, as in the Corinthians case, can also be adapted from ‘below’ as a way of articulating new forms of democracy. Far from being elements of a coherent process implemented from ‘above’, techniques and practices associated




with neoliberalism can be employed by both the powerful and the powerless, resulting in both empowerment and disempowerment.

From political governance to popular culture: football, the neoliberal world order, and the unique positioning of fans and ownersAnalyzed together within the larger politico-economic structure of global football, many elite professional Brazilian and English football clubs and their fans can be seen to lie at different ends of a deeply unequal order. Generally, Brazilian clubs struggle in continual debt, reproducing a neoliberal world order that requires that countries of the global South enter into debt management programs to resolve economic instability. As Harvey (2005) argues, these structural adjustment programs, managed largely by the global North, attempt to ‘squeeze out surpluses from developing countries’ economies’, while requir-ing countries to ‘swallow the poison pill of neoliberal institutional reforms’ (pp. 74–5). For Brazil, structural adjustment has meant the privatization of national industries and adoption of IMF-directed policies, among other initiatives.

If ‘clubs’ were to be substituted for ‘countries’, this process could easily describe the dilemma of Brazilian clubs like Corinthians. Deeply in debt, Corinthians’ directors sold the club to foreign investor MSI, which exploited the club’s resources by selling its tal-ented young players to wealthier clubs in Europe. In doing so, they created a dependency relationship that stunts the growth of the domestic game, alienating and frustrating dis-empowered local fans. The trials of the Brazilian game directly mirror the tribulations of the Brazilian state; both have struggled through financial crises through privatization and dependency on restricted forms of global investment. At the other end of this order lie elite English clubs like Manchester United. United extracts capital from fans in countries of the global South – including Brazil – through satellite television rights, while privatiz-ing and attracting global investors and players to the detriment of many local working-class fans. These developments parallel the trajectory of neoliberal reform in England in which reduced social spending, privatization of national industries, and similar transfor-mations have led to a perceived loss of ‘community’.

My argument is not simply that these two orders of power reflect each other. Rather, by inhabiting both orders simultaneously, fans, owners, and other actors experience simi-lar ‘neoliberal’ processes, coming to understand what I call neoliberal reform through both spheres – consciously or otherwise. As citizens of both their clubs and their coun-tries, many fans understand market-driven governance not merely from living under Thatcher or Fernando Henrique Cardoso, but also from cheering under Dualib, MSI, or Glazer. Likewise, owners of both privatized state companies and football clubs, such as Sibneft3 and MSI’s Boris Berezovsky, practice neoliberal governance by privatizing both state-owned industries and cultural industries under the public’s imagined ownership. Accordingly, fans’ and owners’ ideas about and practices of neoliberalism move through both popular culture and political governance, taking different forms through multiple actors. This phenomenon supports Nikolas Rose’s (1996) understanding of ‘advanced liberalism’, which offers governmentality rather than political economy as central to neoliberal forms. Instead of conceptualizing political economy as creating a neoliberal form that then extends to domains such as sport, as Harvey might, I posit a different



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framework in which neoliberal governmentality emerges from friction between different realms of cultural and political life.

Is it really ‘neoliberal’? Situating commercialization within local historiesEven as many Brazilian and English fans object to the neoliberalization of their clubs, they situate shifting modes of governmentality and their own responses within local histories. Thus, practices such as privatization and deregulation may not be seen from the ground as ‘neoliberal’ per se. Rather, many fans posit and resist them as contemporary manifestations of historically unjust practices; the struggles by fans to defy these prac-tices must be contextualized within deeply rooted historical narratives of opposition to and organization against abuses of power.

For many Corinthians fans, opposition to the club’s neoliberal practices is intertwined with historical opposition to dictatorship, corruption, and injustice. Gaviões was created in 1969 in opposition to the dictatorial regime of then Corinthians president Wadih Helu. In the early 1980s, fans and players united in the famous ‘Corinthians Democracy’, a movement designed to elect a progressive Corinthians president (Shirts, 1988). This cam-paign, led by Sócrates, came to be a national democratic model for the abertura, or open-ing, of the federal government following decades of dictatorship. Throughout this process, Gaviões actively opposed the dictatorship, demanding amnesty for political prisoners and promoting the Diretas Já campaign for direct elections of the Brazilian president (Ligabue, 2005). In 2008, members of the Movimento Fora Dualib introduced their own Diretas Já campaign, lobbying successfully for the direct election of the Corinthians president by members instead of an administrative board. They also demanded and achieved Dualib’s expulsion from the club, comparing him not only to Fernando Henrique Cardoso for privatizing Corinthians, but also ex-president Fernando Collor and his trea-surer P.C. Farias (involved in a corruption scandal) and Paulo Maluf (former São Paulo mayor and governor implicated in money laundering). As much as fans recognize the neoliberal elements of contemporary club politics, they also understand the injustices they suffer within a longer progression of undemocratic governance; they resist by draw-ing from a general history of democratic struggles for justice. These understandings are encompassed within the ideology of Corinthianismo, rooted within the imagined identity of Corinthians as a club of the working classes. Marcelo elaborates:

I see it like this – the Corinthians torcida has this business of being a suffering people. I think the identity, that’s what it’s about. The MST, the farmers, suffering people who fight for a piece of land, who fight for a better, more equal Brazil. You know – the identification comes from that. Because the Corinthians fan is also involved in this class – the majority of Corinthians fans are formed from humble people, really poor people, who don’t have the means to live with dignity. I think the identification comes from that.

In the eyes of many fans, identifying as a Corinthians supporter aligns oneself with the politics and struggles of the poor and thereby supporting opposition to any process or governance, including neoliberalism, that is seen to support or strengthen inequality and injustice.




For many FC fans boycotting Glazer’s United, resistance against the privatization of the club is informed by recalled histories of Mancunian working-class organization. Julian, an FC supporter in his mid-40s, remarks:

United fans have always had a very strong base of politically motivated – political in the football sense – fans, independent supporters groups who stood together and objected to these [takeover attempts]. I think there’s a tradition about Manchester United . . . Because . . . Manchester has a got strong union history and a strong political history, a strong left-wing history.

Other FC fans imagine their struggle against Glazer and commercialization as the latest manifestation of a centuries-old radical Mancunian attitude. Colin, an FC fan in his late-30s, explains a view shared by many supporters:

FC is a peculiarly Mancunian way of doing things . . . Engels didn’t start writing the Communist Manifesto here for no reason. The labor movement wasn’t born here for no reason . . . The trade union movement came out of Manchester . . . it goes all the way back to the Peterloo Massacre, the Corn Laws. Manchester is steeped in these sort of radicalisms, this sort of ‘fuck you’ attitude. And to me, FC is the sort of embodiment of that. You know, ‘we’ll do it our way, our club, our rules!’

Combining a strong sense of local Mancunian identity with the city’s unique history, many FC fans rationalize the club’s creation not as a particular response to neoliberal restructuring, but as a response to general forms of undemocratic establishment. By understanding how fans contextualize the current situation within local histories, policies and actions that might be tagged ‘neoliberal’ become entangled in friction with more complicated politico-economic conditions. A potential consciousness of the specifically ‘neoliberal’ qualities of changes becomes subsumed by a generalized sense of histori-cally contiguous, unjust, and undemocratic governance.

Discussion: Rethinking neoliberalismThrough this comparison, we discover several particularities in what we see as ‘neolib-eralism’. First, nearly identical forms of privatization and deregulation result in different consumptive practices, leading to empowering citizenship for some and class-based dis-enfranchisement for others. Second, the unique positioning of various actors in both football and politics enables understandings of specific elements of neoliberalism to dif-fuse easily through popular culture and political governance. Finally, many fans see ini-tiatives such as privatization not as particularly ‘new’ but as continuations of previous unjust forms of governance. These specificities in what we term ‘neoliberalism’ force us to refine our understanding of this doctrine/ideology/process, to which we often ascribe mysterious and transcendental power.

Problems with Harvey’s neoliberalismOne might easily but mistakenly interpret the ethnographic data as evidence that neolib-eralism is but a global phenomenon with local manifestations, as Harvey argues. Even as



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Harvey (2005) portrays neoliberalism as an encompassing hegemonic force, he acknowl-edges its ‘uneven geographical development’ (p. 13). He attributes ‘the degree of neolib-eralization’ in specific cases to factors such as ‘diversification, innovation, and competition . . . between national, regional, and in some instances even metropolitan models of governance’ as well as ‘some hegemonic outside power, such as the US’ (p. 115). While attempting to explain these geographical particularities, he nonetheless concludes that with neoliberalism comes a ‘universal tendency to increase social inequal-ity and to expose the least fortunate elements in any society’ (p. 118). Though the means may differ, Harvey’s neoliberalism is essentially universal in outcome.

Like most anthropologists, I am sympathetic to the undeniable suffering that many mar-ket-driven policies have created globally, especially for already marginalized peoples. But through a simple, hegemonic construction, Harvey re-inscribes neoliberalism with cohesive power and is dismissive of the possibilities for difference and exceptions. Hoffman et al. (2006) describe their own uneasiness with Harvey’s picture based on their fieldwork:

We found [ethnographic] phenomena in configurations that did not necessarily correspond to the picture of a standard ‘neoliberal package’ described by Harvey and others . . . And yet, they describe situations that are very much connected to the historical processes, modalities of reform and political transformations associated with neoliberalism. (p. 10)

How can analyses move beyond this impasse, in which standard pictures of neoliberal-ism preclude more nuanced understandings of the realities at hand? Hoffman et al. (2006) suggest that an anthropology ‘of’ (rather that simply ‘concerned with’) neoliberalism begin by ‘analytically deconstituting ‘‘neoliberalism’” (p. 10). The disassembly I pro-pose is based on Anna Tsing’s notion of friction.

Rethinking neoliberalism through frictionUndoubtedly, a readily identifiable group of values, strategies of governances, and modes of conduct have proliferated globally; scholars have lumped these global changes into a set called neoliberalism. But by no means are the elements of this set organized, directed, or necessarily free-standing. As Rose (1996) remarks, neoliberalism did not emerge as a project ‘underpinned by a coherent and elaborated political rationality that [neo-conserva-tive political regimes that were elected in Britain and the United States in the late 1970s] then sought to implement’ but that nonetheless, ‘gradually, these diverse skirmishes were rationalized within a relatively coherent mentality of government that came to be termed neo-liberalism’ (p. 53). While Rose writes against an original, rationalized plan for neolib-eralism, Aihwa Ong (2006) writes against a homogenizing form of neoliberalism. She notes that it is not limited to advanced liberal democracies and has been used in postcolo-nial, authoritarian, and postsocialist settings. Importantly, she explains, ‘neoliberalism migrates from site to site, interacting with various assemblages that cannot be analytically reduced to cases of a uniform global condition of “Neoliberalism” writ large’ (p. 14).

In lieu of rationalizing neoliberalism as an omnipresent, homogenizing, ordered global phenomenon, scholars would do better to understand what might be termed neo-liberal ‘flows’ as they become embroiled in and sometimes reproduced through friction.




Tsing (2005) argues that ‘cultures are essentially co-produced in the interactions I call ‘‘friction’’: the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ (p. 4). Writing against a simplistic vision of economic globalization characterized by unimpeded ‘flows’, Tsing does not consider friction as a ‘synonym for resistance’. Rather, frictions create the conditions for people like disenfranchised foot-ball fans to both gain control and influence over their resources as well as to compromise their position within global power structures. In the case of neoliberalism, friction is a means of cultural production by which connections and disjunctures are created in neo-liberal moulds. In the commercialization of football, friction continually appears: between the injustices of the past and those of the present, between businessmen and fans, between the global North and South, and between the world of football and the world of politics. It is through these frictions that a culture of neoliberalism takes form and develops.

Through neoliberal ‘flows’ in friction, a more concrete understanding of neoliberal-ism can be constructed, identifying how these ‘flows’ have proliferated or stagnated, through whom, against whom, and so forth. But the underlying problem remains: what really is neoliberalism? Is it a process? A doctrine? A form of economic globalization? A mode of governance? A way of life? A universal? A local? Its nebulous qualities, and the discourse created to match them, make it generally an even more effective means by which marginalized peoples are disempowered. Examining the concrete frictions between and among these ideas through specific actors, places, genealogies, and so on, as I have attempted to do in this comparative ethnography, can help deconstruct neolib-eralism, perhaps even to great practical effect.

Notes

1. Danny Welbeck is a notable exception.2. FC players, unlike United players, are involved in creating a sense of community and inclu-

sion. Fans are more personally familiar with players, who are mostly from Greater Manchester; the majority of the team works locally while playing semi-professional football part-time. As Jonathan notes, ‘The players come in the pub after the match and meet with the fans. This is great. And that’s what it’s about – it’s about community.’ Fans readily identify with many of the players, who grew up in the same communities the fans did.

3. Sibneft, or Gazprom Neft, is a Russian oil company created in the midst of post-communist privatization.

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The Neoliberalization of Football

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