Paul Willis, Cultural Commodities, and Collective Sport Fandom

Abstract

In sociology of sport, a considerable amount of scholarship concentrates on sport as an arena of social resistance. Fundamental to understanding resistance within practices of sport following and fandom is an underlying knowledge of the nature of sport as a cultural commodity in which fandom and following are invested. This article draws on Paul Willis’s theoretical work as a means of examining contemporary cultural commodities and the commodity nature of sport in particular. The theoretical discussion is illustrated by an empirical study of developments within English soccer involving collective supporters’ resistance to heightened corporate intrusion into the control of professional clubs.

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