Football consumption and cultural transformation

Claudia Martinez-Mullen of the Sociology Department presented a seminar last week entitled “Is professional football a free leisure activity in South Africa?'. Martinez-Mullen, a lecturer in the department, is using her doctoral studies to examine football consumption and cultural transformation among spectators in South Africa and Argentina; the seminar topic is drawn from a particular theme arising from her PhD.

Martinez-Mullen opened with an anecdote from Dennis Brutus' book 'Poetry and Protest', where he described an incident from his youth during which he overheard it said that people of colour could not be Springboks. This, he believed, prompted him to question, and to fight, the status quo. Sport thus becomes an arena of the struggle.

She approached her topic from a Marxist and Neo-Marxist angle, looking at the idea of free individuals who can make a conscious choice as to how they spend their leisure time, and in this way attempting to bring some insight into “contemporary leisure relations produced and reproduced in the context of a specific system of power.”

Football began with industrialisation, where migrant workers in the mines and the factories came into contact with the game and took it back to the townships and rural areas. It fast became a favourite leisure activity. She argues that with the development of capitalism, however, football became part of the apparatus which organises the leisure time of the workers.

In the 1950s the Black Liberation Movement campaigned against segregation in sport, but this became a reality only in 1991, when the Integrated Football Association was formed after negotiations between the ANC and the National Party. Since that time audiences have multiplied exponentially and South African football has fully entered the age of commodification. This can be seen in the amount of money spectators are willing to pay to be part of the sport.

To 'feel it' comes at a cost – tickets, football strips, T-shirts and shoes are required to let supporters become a part of the brand. Corporate sponsors and celebrity endorsements keep capital flow high. Football, says Martinez-Mullen, is an activity with multiple implications, a microcosm of the capitalist world.

Looking at leisure time from a Marxist perspective, can professional football be said to be a leisure activity? Martinez-Mullen points out that leisure has extraordinary importance in the Western World, because people think they are engaging in these activities out of free choice. Marxists, however, say otherwise, insisting that modes of leisure activity are dictated by the capitalist machine.

In South Africa the leisure industry is organised on a profit-margin basis, with many becoming part of the cycle of commodification in their attempts to become a part of their desired social grouping. There was some good news, however; Martinez-Mullen spoke of a space of hope, where certain sectors are looking to escape the commodification of leisure. 

Martinez-Mullen completed her Degree in Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and her Masters in Social Science at UKZN, moving from Kwa-Zulu- Natal to Grahamstown earlier this year.