“Floodlights, Camera, Action”: An ethnography of performance cultures and team dynamics in football.

Abstract

My presentation plunges into the performative world of characters in non-league football, where my PhD research is situated. Adopting the role of Team Manager as Storyteller, I will give an account of THE VIPERS, who are a sub-set of players within the football team I was immersed in, during an extensive period of fieldwork. Two infographic artworks guide me through the tale; ‘The Last Soccer’ explaining the context of my research, followed by ‘Dressing Room Transitions’ where we discover the masks behind which otherwise mild-mannered individuals find new freedoms to act out their alter-egos whenever they step onto a football pitch. Donning the mask in the dressing room, players get their ‘game face’ on, which for THE VIPERS is licence to elevate physical tackles into physical attack, wherever the ball may be. Infographic 2 is also a pictorial autoethnography of my roles in life, as a researcher and as a professional within the football world. The episode when THE VIPERS revealed themselves came 6 months after my honeymoon period of entering the field, when I was totally lost in the field. Exiting the field was challenging, but now achieved, allows me to tell this tale.