William Tantam

In my work, I follow football in the lives of informal football players in Black River, Jamaica. I look at how analysts might conceptualize a football ‘field,’ following and locate how football intersects with social hierarchies. I am particularly interested in how what happens on the football field might be translated into capital away from the field. I use data gained through playing in daily football matches, attending ‘schoolboy’ football matches, and socializing with players and non-players away from the field. Football emerges as an articulation of age, class, and belonging, and is used by people to locate themselves in locally and globally. In an area of distinct social divisions, moreover, it offers the potential for sociality across those divisions, and operates in a particular way to teach younger, precariously employed men how to become successful, older men.