Whether they helped bring down Jose Mourinho, led a march against their club owner or pushed back plans to commercialize their sport, fans have a long history of using their passion as a nonviolent tool for social change. This issue of Fan Cultures combines comparative research with ethnography to explore fans’ protest stories—and to remind us that fan activism is more than just a fad.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Black football fans turned their passion into a powerful nonviolent weapon, enacting boycotts of games to protest segregated seating and discrimination at stadiums around the country. They plastered their communities with banners, shouted out slogans to demand equality and supported Black sportswriters like Jim Hall who kept fans up to date on the latest boycotts.
Fan activism has continued to play an important role in the life of modern clubs, both as a vehicle for political engagement and for supporting the broader goals of their non-profit organisations. Activism that addresses club management is often framed by wider questions of governance, including ownership structures, power imbalances and public policy decisions (e.g., the fans of Blackburn Rovers who walked out of their match with Wigan to highlight their club’s relationship to Venky’s, an Indian company that specialises in poultry and processed food).
In addition to highlighting activism around these broader issues, this issue of Fan Cultures also features essays that show how fans’ artistic creativity can be a form of protest. For example, slash fan fiction can be a critical form of analysis, providing an intricate close reading that challenges out-of-character writing, racism and cissexism in the canon — from erasure of queer realities to the murder of characters of color for the development of cishet ones.