Football: Game, Religion or War?
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Free admission
General Information
Entrance to all the events in the “Talks and Thoughts” Cycle is free and on a first come, first served basis.
The distribution of entrance tickets begins one (1) hour before each event.
Simultaneous translation is provided in the case of speakers using a language other than Greek.
Introduction
This conversation is an attempt to understand the growing politicization of sport and the increasingly powerful role sport plays in the public sphere.
For many men, their identity as a supporter of a given football club is fundamental to how they define themselves in terms of others, as well as organizing multiple dimensions of their inner worlds. As with every identity, that of the football fan essentially differentiates or contradistinguishes the supporter from others, and manifests itself in a range of related behaviors. Our discussion will explore the kinship between these behaviours and others typical of different, powerful, exclusive identities (gender, sexuality, race, party) in an effort to understand the growing politicization of sport and the increasingly powerful role sport plays in the public sphere.
Approaching football from this angle, we will discuss political positions and behaviors that exist over almost the entire political spectrum in the light of research data both published and unpublished. We will also be focusing on other crucial subjects like the role of ‘machismo’ in the sports fan identity, the important role this identity plays in sexual behavior in general, the issue of hate and its cultivation, and extreme nationalism made manifest in the football sphere (see “inter alia” Greece-Albania football matches).
Finally, we will be talking about the formation of a singular normality in private life through the filter and the ‘diary’ of a sports fan.
Speakers:
Kostas Giannakopoulos: Assistant Professor, Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean
Yiannis Zaimakis: Assistant Professor of the Sociology of Culture and Local Societies, Department of Sociology, University of Crete
Christina Koulouri: Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University
Pantelis Kyprianos: Professor of History and the Sociology of Education, University of Patras
Gerasimos Stefanatos: Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, member of the Quatrième Groupe of the O.P.L.F.
Moderated by:
Christos Charalampopoulos: Sports journalist
This discussion forms part of the “Greek thought in dialogue: Experiential learning programmes” project, which is itself part of the “Academy of Plato: the State and the Citizen” Action implemented within the framework of the Education and Lifelong Learning Programme co-funded by the EU (European Social Fund) and national funds.
