Gavin Weedon

‘Glocal boys’: Exploring experiences of acculturation amongst migrant youth footballers in Premier League academies

This article explores the experiences of acculturation recounted by migrant youth footballers following their migrations to Premier League academies. Whereas problems of acculturation have been documented in research exploring the migratory experiences of senior professional athletes, the framing of migrant youth footballers as a problematic collective in academic, public and media discourse has tended to deflect from consideration of the individual athletes in transition. By drawing on a series of interviews with migrant youth players from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds and their ‘acculturating groups’ (Ward et al., 2001) of academy staff including Directors, Managers, Coaches and Education and Welfare Officers, I aim to explore the prevalent issues of acculturation associated with being at once a migrant, an adolescent, and an elite athlete, adjusting to the demands of an intensive physical training programme whilst encountering and negotiating an unfamiliar social and cultural environment. In conceptualizing the process of acculturation as the experiential facet of the glocalization thesis, the article reflects on the interplay between the distinct political economy within which youth players migrate and their individual experiences of acculturation.

Foreign players in the English Premier Academy League: ‘Feet-drain’ or ‘feet-exchange’?

The aim of this article is to make sense of the effects of foreign player involvement in English football’s elite youth academy system. Based upon a series of interviews conducted with academy directors, managers, and coaches at Premier League clubs, and senior figures in the Premier League’s Youth Development department, the article argues that the involvement of foreign players should not be viewed negatively where indigenous players are increasingly forced to the margins of the professional game, or where the recruiting of foreign players results in the deskilling of donor nations. By drawing on research located within the area of highly skilled migration, the article argues that the involvement of foreign players can be seen to reflect processes of ‘feet-exchange’ where skills and knowledge circulate to improve overall standards of performance for indigenous and foreign players. The article concludes by arguing that the recruitment of foreign players to English football’s elite youth development system does not appear to act to the detriment of host and donor nations. Rather, by recruiting foreign players to Premier League academies, and by integrating them with indigenous players, a culture is created which enhances the development potential of all players.

Camaraderie Reincorporated Tough Mudder and the Extended Distribution of the Social

Tough Mudder, a market-leading event in the burgeoning practice and industry of mud running, is a 21 km “military-style” obstacle course with a curiously collaborative ethic. Teams of runners traverse the course in the name of fun, fitness, bravado, and much more besides, galvanized around Tough Mudder’s distinctive ethos of togetherness. This essay sets out to reassemble the “camaraderie” for which Tough Mudder is renowned as an element and outcome of material, corporeal, and symbolic enactments, and, with actor-network theory as a guiding sensibility, recasts it as a profoundly shared endeavor, one in which a whole host of actors, human and otherwise, make dramatic and subtle contributions.

Textbook journalism? Objectivity, education and the professionalization of sports reporting

In this article, we present an analysis of recent handbooks, field guides and other educative texts on sports journalism. Authored mostly by current and former journalists turned university educators, these books signal the professionalization of sports journalism amid changes and challenges to news media industries. In offering guidance on best practice sports reporting, they are also situated in tension with the long-standing denigration of sports journalism as the trivial back-page filler that props up more serious, substantive content. Through a thematic analysis of the textbooks’ contents and the epistemic, economic and educative context of their collective emergence, we address the following question in what follows: How do these textbooks advise would-be sports journalists to respond to ‘serious’ social, ethical and political matters? In doing so, we detail how established categories of objectivity and ethics are the primary points of recourse through which these books advise on reporting about the many social issues in which sport is implicated. In turn, we reflect on the virtues of – and the tensions and contradictions surrounding – these advocations. By way of conclusion, we contend that professionalization represents an opportunity for collaborations between sport media scholars and current and former journalists – in their shared roles as educators – in the pursuit of ‘excellent’ sports reporting. The notion of ‘strong objectivity’ is our conceptual guide for how such collaborations might be fostered.

Military Resisters, War Resistance, and the Ethics of Exposure and Disclosure

Traitorous cowards or courageous heroes? Military resisters elicit fervent responses not simply because they polarize perspectives on war, nation, and citizenship, but because they encounter and embody a moral quandary which marks all conflict: The fear of harming another when one’s own life, and sense of self, is endangered. With recourse to Judith Butler’s meditations on the precarity of life and the finitude of liberal humanist ontologies, this article contemplates the ethical imperative of eschewing both the valorization and demonization of individual resisters who found perpetrating war too much to bear. My focus lies in 21st-century U.S. military resisters who journey to Canada in search of refuge, residency, and “peace of mind.” While their experiences are imbued with ethical promise for amplifying oppositional political perspectives on war, this promise is inhibited by the legal and political apparatuses in which they are constituted, through which they are individuated, and to which they remain bound.

Globalization and football, by Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson

Luhmann’s ideas are adequate to the task of handling these topics well’ (p. 272). One could add that seeing sport as a functional system, like politics, law and economics, as these authors do, inevitably renders a Luhmannian approach narrow and restrictive. The second problem for Hoberman lies in Luhmann’s conceptual vocabulary. It is undeniably unsettling that a glossary is deemed necessary and that, even with its assistance, the reader can still be left distinctly nonplussed by some of the arguments that are presented. It is worth adding, however, that these are by no means the first group of scholars to write about sport with an apparently cultish zeal to justify the thinking of an intellectual master or masters that ultimately undermines their capacity to increase our understanding of sport. Furthermore, they are not alone in replicating the more obscure language of their mentors. In so doing though, and this is equally true of the contributors to this volume, all such scholars arguably do sport a disservice – it is a lot more fun than they sometimes imply –whilst simultaneously failing to convince mainstream social scientists that they are engaged in serious work. To the credit of Wagner and Storm, by inviting John Hoberman to join them, they demonstrate that they are not afraid of criticism and are willing to learn from others. If only the same could be said for some of the bigger theoretical battalions in contemporary sports studies. It is difficult to see this book selling well. It is too theoretically dense to recommend to all but a handful of graduate students. Seasoned scholars in the field are unlikely, regrettable that this may be, to be attracted by the possibility of learning new tricks. Having said all that, I was nevertheless impressed by the authors’ enthusiasm and their willingness to engage with sociological theory as well as with many, if certainly not all, of sport’s major challenges. I wish them well but fear the worst.