Research Catalog

Following the ball : the migration of African soccer players across the Portuguese colonial empire, 1949-1975

Title: Following the ball : the migration of African soccer players across the Portuguese colonial empire, 1949-1975 / Todd Cleveland.
Author: Cleveland, Todd
Publication: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2017]

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Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	GV944.P8 C54 2017	Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 266 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

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.

Series Statement

Ohio University research in international studies. Global and comparative studies series ; no. 16

Uniform Title

Research in international studies. Global and comparative studies series ; no. 16.

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-258) and index.

Contents

Chapter 1 Foundations -- The Introduction and Consumption of Soccer in Lusophone Africa 22 -- Chapter 2 Engaging with the Game -- African Practitioners in the Colonies 47 -- Chapter 3 Following the Ball, Realizing a Goal -- From the Colonies to the Metropole 84 -- Chapter 4 Successes, Setbacks, and Strategies -- Football and Life in the Metropole 126 -- Chapter 5 Calculated Conciliation -- Apoliticism in a Politically Charged Context 176.

ISBN

9780896803138
0896803139
9780896803145
0896803147
9780896804999 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2017024500

OCLC

ocn982091678
982091678
SCSB-8878279

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library