ISBN:
978-0-89680-314-5
,
978-0-89680-313-8
,
978-0-89680-499-9 /eBook
Language:
English
Pages:
xiii, 266 Seiten
,
Illustrationen
Series Statement:
Ohio University Research in International Studies. Global and Comparative Studies 16
Keywords:
Kolonie, portugiesisch Geschichte
;
Kolonialgeschichte
;
Angola
;
Mosambik
;
Kapverdische Insel
;
São Tomé e Príncipe
;
Guinea Bissau
;
Afrikaner
;
Fußball
;
Sport
;
Migration
Abstract:
Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal's African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal's increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusebio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal's empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players' transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empireWith Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal's African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal's increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusebio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal's empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players' transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.
Description / Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Foundations: The Introduction and Consumption of Soccer in Lusophone Africa -- Engaging with the Game: African Practitioners in the Colonies -- Following the Ball, Realizing a Goal: From the Colonies to the Metropole -- Successes, Setbacks, and Strategies: Football and Life in the Metropole -- Calculated Conciliation: Apoliticism in a Politically Charged Context -- Epilogue --Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Note:
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 249 - 258
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