Relational Space: Football as a Meta Fetishism

Abstract

The concept of space, which is constantly reshaped within the routine activity of geography, forms its contexts through the processes it undergoes, and constructs its basic relations through the “other”. This relationality, which embodies all kinds of dichotomic constructs such as good-bad, beautiful-ugly, and political-apolitical, can have a natural fiction or be based on hegemonic structuralism loaded with ideology. While it can ensure the continuity of individual and collective culture, identity, and memory, it can also commodify the reproduction of all kinds of power elements. Therefore, the relational relations of space can only be understood depending on when, where, and by whom it is constructed. Football spaces, where this relationality is intensely embedded, are constantly reproduced by different actors at different scales and presented to the daily life consumption of individuals and societies in new contexts. In this context, this article aims to analyze the relational contexts of football spaces in the case of the Qatar World Cup. In the study, in which the qualitative research method was used, the data obtained from Twitter users during the 2022 World Cup were analyzed using content and descriptive analysis techniques. As a result of the research, it was understood that football spaces have multi-layered sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts constructed by both individual and ideological actors and systems.

Keywords

• critical human geography
• culture industry
• cultural and political geography
• football
• hegemony
• relational space
• sports geography