Football support in the North East of England as living heritage

Abstract

This thesis represents the first full-length analysis of English football support as a form of cultural heritage in the field of Critical Heritage Studies (CHS). Here, I examine communities of football supporters attached to three clubs across the post-industrial North East of England: Newcastle United (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Grimsby Town (Grimsby), Horden Community Welfare (Horden). Using an adaptable oral history based methodology, I draw on the emic knowledge of football supporters to answer three central research questions. First, what are the key characteristics that define football support as a cultural praxis? Second, how does involvement in communities of football support enable participants to exercise a degree of cultural resilience against a wider context of industrial ruination? Third, how can cultures of football support be critically theorised as a form of cultural heritage? My thesis makes three intertwined central arguments. First, football supporters comprise symbolic communities, the boundaries of which are enforced through an assemblage of heritage-linked behaviours, rituals, values and relationships. Second, the communal, continual and ritualistic nature of football support can empower supporters to sustain elements of industriekultur into a post-industrial present. In this sense involvement in symbolic communities of football support empowers supporters to exercise cultural resilience against wider contexts of deindustrial flux. Finally, I conclude by arguing that football support should is a form of living heritage. Drawing on my previous analysis, I construct a functional model of football support as a living, adaptive intergenerational tradition defined by four intertwined continuities: community connection, function, knowledge and evolution. Through these conclusions, I aim to legitimise football culture as a rich research seam within CHS, call for a greater focus the role of cultural heritage in fostering non equilibristic resilience and highlight continuity as a crucial element of heritage – especially in contexts of deindustrialisation. Equally, at a moment when the notion of “football heritage” is gaining popular currency amongst supporters, academics and policymakers alike, I provide the means to move contemporary debates on football heritage away from questions of definition and towards critical considerations of how football cultures actually function as heritage.