The Precarity of Masculinity

Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon

Uroš Kovač (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

220 Seiten

2024
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80539-330-6 (ISBN)

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Since the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. This book unpacks young Cameroonians' football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.

Uroš Kovač is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society. He is a social anthropologist researching gender, migration, religion and development, often through the prism of sports in Africa.

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Precarity, Spirituality, and Masculinities

Chapter 1. Dreams of Mobility: Football between Politics, Economy, Spirituality, and Transnational Markets

Chapter 2. “This Is a Business, Not a Charity”: Political and Moral Economy of Football and the Production of the Suffering Subject

Chapter 3. Becoming Useful and Humble: Moral Masculinities in Uncertain Times

Chapter 4. “Tapping the Power”: Ruptures and Continuities in the Spiritual World of Football

Chapter 5. Anxious Athletes, Spiritual Wives: Football, Pentecostalism, and the Body

Conclusion: Masculinities, Faith, and the Production of Aspiration

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	14.05.2024
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
ISBN-10	1-80539-330-8 / 1805393308
ISBN-13	978-1-80539-330-6 / 9781805393306
Zustand	Neuware