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The trajectories leading to supporting at a distance: the Olympique de Marseille case study

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/16138171.2006.11687785

2380-5919

Ludovic Lestrelin, Loïc Sallé, Jean-Charles Basson,

French Urban and Social Studies

This article aims to define the dynamics leading individuals to get involved in a passion we chose to name “supporting at a distance”. This practice involves actively supporting a football team that does not belong to one’s own town or region. The study relies on to the concept of “career”, directly stemming from the Chicago sociological tradition and studies on militancy. This concept will help to understand how someone starts supporting a club while living several hundreds of kilometres away. We therefore suggest analysing the careers of football supporters by focusing on the notion of rewards of the militant engagement, and by emphasizing the weight of “biographical accidents” in the construction of individual trajectories.