https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n53.06
Nicolás Cabrera
Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Abstract:
This article is part of a research work aiming to explain the process of formation of a fanbase in Argentine’s soccer through its members’ daily experiences. Those groups are mainly defined by setting the cheer, that is, the festive performance they deploy to support the team they love. Based on nine-year fieldwork following the case of Córdoba’s Belgrano Athletic Club’ fanbase, self-identified as Los Piratas (The Pirates), this article makes a historical account of the cheer asdeployed from 1968 up to our days. We will observe that those performances are the result of historical sedimentations and contextual arrangements with interventions of online mass culture. To delve into the aesthetic dimension of a fanbase (barra) involves understanding symbolic products identifying, bringing together, and marking a difference on the affective level.
Keywords: soccer, fanbases, performance, aesthetics, sociology, anthropology.
