%0 Journal Article
%T In-form: Football as the Popular Game of Malappuram
%A MOHAMED SHAFEEQ K.
%J ThirdFront : Journal of Humanities and Social Science
%D 2013
%I ThirdFront
%X This paper argues that while it remains a fact that football is the most visible sport in Malappuram, football also allows identifications for the mainstream to describe Malappuram that is by definition in this discourse an other-ed space. By delineating the importance of affect in football and its resistance to being quantified, I argue that the form of football necessitates a spectator whose spectatorship has to be manifested in bodily rituals. I also argue that the category fan has historically been identified with a site of lack ¨C sociological, economical, political ¨C and it is this historical function that a Malappuram football fan serves in the mainstream imagination. I then attempt to read football fandom in Malappuram through the lens of glocalization to argue that more than identification, it is dis-identification ¨C a divorce with the actual racial, geographic, national specificities ¨C that is at the core of Malappuram football fandom.
%K Football
%K Malapuram
%K Popular game
%U http://thirdfront.in/index.html/documents/4.pdf