How Children Become Fans: Learning Fandom via the Body

Abstract

In “How Children Become Fans: Learning Fandom via the Body”, Tali Friedman and Tamar Rapoport examine how fandom is acquired in childhood. They take a close look at how children become fans by focusing on the bodily process of mastering fandom practices that begins at a young age. In documenting and analyzing this process, their research reveals that the habitus of fandom is learned at a young age mainly through imitation and the repetitive exercise of the constituent practices. The analysis draws on the well-known concept of habitus introduced by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice (trans.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) The concept denotes a system of embodied dispositions and orientations that organizes and manages the ways in which individuals perceive, react to and embody the social world—fandom and football in the case of this anthology. According to Bourdieu, habitus is the means by which the social order is expressed in and by the individual’s body, shaping the manner in which it conducts itself physically and appears in the social world. Applying the habitus concept to football fandom, the analysis shows how—through imitation and identification, experimentation and training as well as through experiencing bodily intimacy—children assume and assimilate the fandom habitus, thus becoming habituated to performing the practices properly and achieving the status of “authentic fans”. In this context, the chapter identifies the arenas (home, stadium, peer group) and the somatic events (routine and unexpected) where the inculcating and learning of fandom take place and fandom is transmitted to the next generation of fans.