Soccer, Globalization, and Innovation: The Beautiful Game in the 21st Century (Critical Research in Football)

This is the first book to focus on innovation as a response to globalization in soccer in the context of the global development of the world’s most popular sport.

Concentrating on social innovation and on innovations in governance and organization in soccer’s traditional heartlands and also at its global periphery, the book explores some of the most important contemporary themes in the social scientific study of sport, including fandom, activism, gender, governance, new media, artificial intelligence, greenwashing, and sport-for-development. The book features case studies from around the world, including the United States, Brazil, Türkiye, Finland, England, Spain, Japan, Morocco, Uruguay, and South Africa, and it opens new theoretical perspectives on soccer as a vector of social development and on the intersection of sport and globalization.

This is fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport management, sport development, soccer, political science, or global development.

Kirk Bowman is a professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of four books and co-produced six feature-length documentary films in Brazil. Kirk has conducted soccer and politics fieldwork in eighteen countries and has a forthcoming book on soccer and global politics.

John B. Boyd is a PhD candidate at Michigan State University in cultural anthropology, focusing on North Africa and its diaspora. His research interests include youth and social movements, urban anthropology, the intersection of sport and society, and football and football fandom in North Africa.