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Few cultural activities speak more powerfully to international histories of the modern world than football. In the late nineteenth century, this cheap and simple sport emerged as a major legacy of Britain’s formal and informal empires and spread quickly across Europe, South America, and Africa. Today, football (known to many as soccer) is arguably the world’s most popular pastime, an activity played and watched by millions of people around the globe.
Contested Fields introduces readers to key aspects of the global game, synthesizing research on football’s transnational role in reflecting and shaping political, socio-economic, and cultural developments over the past 150 years. Each chapter uses case studies and cutting-edge scholarship to analyze an important element of football’s international story: migration, money, competition, gender, race, space, spectatorship, and confrontation.
Interrogating the costs and benefits of the game’s controversial path to global pre-eminence, Contested Fields shows how and why football matters in the modern world – as part of the social fabric and as a site of political power and resistance.
- Imprint: University of Toronto Press
- Published: January 2020
- Pages: 256
Alan McDougall is a professor of History at the University of Guelph.
"Clearly written, widely researched, originally organized, and provocatively titled, Alan McDougall's work finds the sweet spot between an accessible account that will enlighten the newcomer and an intelligent rendering that provides new material unknown to many experts. Building on his earlier work, the author provides yet another reminder of soccer's inescapable relevance to the modern world."
Robert Edelman, University of California, San Diego
"Alan McDougall’s book provides a concise and insightful history of football. This is global history at its best."
Thomas Adam, University of Texas, Arlington
"Contested Fields adds to a small and important body of scholarly literature that considers the global dimensions of football. McDougall combines key sociological and historical themes of football in an impressive, accessible, and comprehensive manner. This is an excellent addition to our historical understanding of the global game."
Chris Bolsmann, California State University, Northridge