CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Faje, Florin Mihai |
|---|---|
| Title | Together, but Still Apart: Ethnic Identity, Class and Football Fandom in Cluj-Napoca, Romania |
| Summary | Over the last years Cluj-Napoca became the site of an intense footballing rivalry. The present study investigates the emergence of this opposition among the football fans of Universitatea and C.F.R., the town's football clubs. I argue that ethnicity and class played a key role in the polarization of fandom in Cluj-Napoca as soon as C.F.R. appeared as an apt sporting contender at the local and the national level. Analyzing in conjunction the ethnic and class dynamics of the town allows me to grasp the contentious issues taken up by football fans and reproduced through their actions. The stadium is seen as a public space mobilized to express such disputed problems. The case of C.F.R.'s followers, organizationally divided along ethnic lines, is closely investigated and illustrates how common means of identification develop to downplay the possible ethnic tensions and to provide a unitary support for the club among people sharing a similar class background. The findings suggests that although ethnicity and class work to produce a strong interclub rivalry, the fans of the same club find strategies to move beyond these lines of cleavage. |
| Supervisor | Rabinowitz, Dan; Kalb, Don |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/faje_florin.pdf |
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