Fever pitch: spatial, material, and temporal organisational dimensions of gendered peer relations on the school football pitch

Abstract

We investigate the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch. The study is part of an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from preschool class up to grade eight (approximately ages 5–13). The findings in this study are based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with pupils at three schools in Sweden. Our findings illustrate how social-ecological elements of spatial, material, and organisational factors such as school design, the material construction of the pitches, and the temporal organisation of the space through scheduling promote gendered positioning and fevered interactions which influence peer relations and sometimes contribute to degrading treatment, harassment and bullying. Our study demonstrates how these processes need to be understood as complexly related to social-ecological factors beyond the football pitch setting.