Balón y Bandera: Nationalism, Sports and Subalternity in Latin America (1920s-2000s)

Eric Hobsbawm’s oft-cited quotation “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people” (Hobsbawm, 1990) eloquently grasps the nationalistic feeling of many football enthusiasts during a World Cup. The perception of a sports team as the metonymic representation of a nation was and still is a powerful image of modern nationalism. This research project aims to analyse how subaltern groups contributed to the construction of Latin American nationalism through football. By introducing the subaltern perspective into the history of nationalism and sports, and by studying the imagination of the nation through the lens of Ecuadorian football, this project will deepen our understanding of how nationalism and sports can intensify or channel issues of ethnicity, class and gender. The envisaged research will introduce an innovative methodology to the historical field and to the history of nationalism and subalternity in particular, and will contribute to ongoing interdisciplinary discussions on nationalism and sports.