Jon Mitchell
University of Sussex, Anthropology, Faculty Member
Page 155. 9 Players, Patrons and Politicians: Oppositional Cultures in Maltese Football Gary Armstrong and Jon P. Mitchell* Valletta City-one of the most successful teams in Malta, with some of the most loyal and partisan fans on the... more
Page 155. 9 Players, Patrons and Politicians: Oppositional Cultures in Maltese Football Gary Armstrong and Jon P. Mitchell* Valletta City-one of the most successful teams in Malta, with some of the most loyal and partisan fans on the island. ...
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What can the history of a nation's football reveal about that nation's wider political and socio-cultural identity? How can the study of local football culture help us to understand the powerful international forces at play within... more
What can the history of a nation's football reveal about that nation's wider political and socio-cultural identity? How can the study of local football culture help us to understand the powerful international forces at play within the modern game? Based on long-term and detailed ethnographic research, this book uses Malta as a critical case study to explore the dynamics of contemporary football. Situated on the fringes of the EU, and with an appalling record in international competition, the Maltese are nevertheless fanatical about the game. This book examines Maltese football in the context of the island's unique politics, culture and national identity, shedding light upon both Maltese society and on broader processes, both local and global, within the international game. The book explores a range of key issues in contemporary football, such as: the dynamics of international player migration football corruption and ethics the politics of sponsorship and TV deals the global appeal of footballing "brands" such as Manchester United, Juventus and Bayern Munich. This book is essential reading for students and researchers working in Sports Studies, Sociology of Sport, Football, Globalisation, Politics and Ethnic Studies.
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Even in a winner-loser culture that is football, it is in the interests of the good of the game that frequent losers sometimes win. At the level of world competition small nations know their chances of victory against larger ones are... more
Even in a winner-loser culture that is football, it is in the interests of the good of the game that frequent losers sometimes win. At the level of world competition small nations know their chances of victory against larger ones are negligible, but their fans will expect the occasional drawn game and certainly a victory over countries of similar standing. When such logic does not realise itself, problems set in; the spectators become disconsolate. As we write in 1998, the followers of the Maltese national side are some of the most disconsolate fans in the world. A World Cup qualifying campaign was concluded in September 1997 with Malta having lost all 12 games, conceded 37 goals and scored only two. Consecutive 6–0 defeats at the hands of Yugoslavia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic might have been expected, but losing home and away to the Faroe Islands (population 43,000) was not.
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... Wheaton Why Sports Morally Matter William J. Morgan Fastest, Highest, Strongest A critique of high-performance sport Rob Beamish and Ian ... on this course, particularly the following Jean-Paul Baldacchino, Joe Grech, Matthew Vella,... more
... Wheaton Why Sports Morally Matter William J. Morgan Fastest, Highest, Strongest A critique of high-performance sport Rob Beamish and Ian ... on this course, particularly the following Jean-Paul Baldacchino, Joe Grech, Matthew Vella, Victoria Galea, Sean Vigar, and upward ...
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This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”.... more
This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”. It argues that anthropology has a role to play in drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity.
1. (no abstract for Intro) 2. This article examines experiences of the uncanny within woodlands of Southern England among walkers who have impaired vision. It proposes that uncanny experiences disrupt assumptions that humans actively... more
1. (no abstract for Intro) 2. This article examines experiences of the uncanny within woodlands of Southern England among walkers who have impaired vision. It proposes that uncanny experiences disrupt assumptions that humans actively perceive a passive landscape by approaching the landscape as an actant provoking uncanny experiences that shift senses of self–landscape relations. Optical tropes have pervaded notions of both the uncanny and conceptualizations of self–landscape relations in contemporary European intellectual thought. Here, attention to the case study of blindness reconfigures these understandings and reveals the slippery nexus of the visible and the invisible in uncanny experiences. Motifs of vision are refracted in the experiences of “phantom vision” through which people who have noncongenitally impaired vision might “see” in their “mind’s eye.” The palpable, felt, multisensorial senses of the uncanny are revealed with the presences of trees and visceral nature of darkness. Uncanny landscapes are characterized by presences, the unknown, and disjunctures, in which notions of familiarity and strangeness, known and unknown, collide
Research Interests: Buddhism, Art, Ethnography, Posthumanism, Cultural Landscapes, and 12 moreMalta (Archaeology), Anthropology of the Senses, Material Religion, Witchcraft (Anthropology Of Religion), Landscape, The uncanny, Sacred Landscape (Archaeology), More-Than-Human Geographies, Vision Impairment and blindness, Eastern Himalayas, Uncanny, and Sensory Anthropology
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A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an... more
A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, "modernity." This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting that rather than an indigenous resistance to capitalism, such representations signal a profound moral ambivalence towards the socio-economic process inherent in capitalist economy. Using a range of examples, from Surinamese zombies to American horror films, it demonstrates the extent to which evil imagery is linked to a fear of excess, particularly in situations where people find themselves, or perceive themselves, to be peripheral to the centers of political, economic, and cultural power.
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... Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Contributors xi Introduction 1 Jon P. Mitchell Chapter 1 Ethnography and Memory 16 Johannes Fabian Chapter ... Chapter 10 Tracking Global Flows and Still Moving: The Ethnography of Responses to... more
... Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Contributors xi Introduction 1 Jon P. Mitchell Chapter 1 Ethnography and Memory 16 Johannes Fabian Chapter ... Chapter 10 Tracking Global Flows and Still Moving: The Ethnography of Responses to AIDS 135 Cristiana Bastos Chapter 11 ...
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This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”.... more
This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a “Prof”. It argues that anthropology has a role to play in drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity.
The term ‘ethnography’ has achieved considerable currency across the social and human sciences. This workshop focuses on ethnography as a method and seeks to examine the consequences of this ‘exportation’ of ethnography to other... more
The term ‘ethnography’ has achieved considerable currency across the social and human sciences. This workshop focuses on ethnography as a method and seeks to examine the consequences of this ‘exportation’ of ethnography to other disciplines – the costs of its success. On the one hand it seeks to explore “where we’re at” in methodological terms. How has ethnography developed as a practice within anthropology? It is received wisdom that the older mode of village or community study has become outmoded as anthropology seeks to engage with new ethnographic objects. Where does this leave the ethnographic method? What kinds of new orthodoxies are emerging in ethnographic practice? What is distinctive about an anthropological – as opposed to sociological, ethnological, geographical or cultural studies – approach? On the other hand, it seeks to examine the ways ‘ethnography’ is done in disciplines other than anthropology. A range of research practices across the disciplines are being describ...
Panel 3 evaluated 53 units in all, 22 institutional units and 31 research groups. The evaluation included university departments of political science, political scientists working in interdisciplin ...
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Research Interests: Anthropology, Accountability, Political Science, Politics, Neoliberalism, and 3 moreAudit, Impact, and Gn
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For good reasons, anthropology some decades ago deconstructed the Mediterraneanist picture of familialist societies in the South. However, this deconstruction unexpectedly had its political twin in Malta’s fight against corruption to meet... more
For good reasons, anthropology some decades ago deconstructed the Mediterraneanist picture of familialist societies in the South. However, this deconstruction unexpectedly had its political twin in Malta’s fight against corruption to meet the conditions for EU-membership in 2004. Drawing on a deeper concept of “territoriality”, introduced by anthropologist Ina-Maria Greverus, the article considers lately observed new variants of nationalist positions that paradoxically are deeply entwined with clientelistic dynamics against the state, culminating in the recent murder of critical journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
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Page 1. A Bridge Too Far? The Relationships Between History and Anthropology JON P. MITCHELL Focaal, tijdschrift voor anthropologie, No. 26/27 (i9°6), 'Historical Anthropology: the Unwaged Debate', special issue edited by Don... more
Page 1. A Bridge Too Far? The Relationships Between History and Anthropology JON P. MITCHELL Focaal, tijdschrift voor anthropologie, No. 26/27 (i9°6), 'Historical Anthropology: the Unwaged Debate', special issue edited by Don Kalb, Hans Marks and Herman Tak. ...
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Critiques of the essentialising tendencies of nationalist discourse are well established in the social sciences—particularly in anthropology. This article builds on the calls for a more processual approach to national identity. It focuses... more
Critiques of the essentialising tendencies of nationalist discourse are well established in the social sciences—particularly in anthropology. This article builds on the calls for a more processual approach to national identity. It focuses not only on the problematic essentialism of discourses of national identity, but also on their inherent teleology. Social scientists have shared with nationalists a view of national identity as a problem that needs to be solved, and in doing so have adopted a teleological view that assumes that at some point in the future resolution is both possible and desirable. Picking up on recent theorisations of identity, the article argues that identity is inherently irresolvable, and for this reason we are better off investigating not the content of particular national identities, but the processes through which identities are debated—or indeed identity itself as a category is debated. The article concerns national identity in Malta, particularly the role of historians in articulating the identity debates. It links controversies within the historical community to the distinctive polarities of Maltese party politics, which developed in colonial Malta and continue into the post-colonial era. Although initially concerned with defining the content of national identity, political and historical debate shifted in the late twentieth century to focus on how it should be defined—and indeed whether identity was a useful category for describing Malta and its people. The article argues that this shift from content to process should be acknowledged by analysts of national identity, who should revise their analyses accordingly.
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A nation's politics and socio-cultural identity can sometimes be best considered through the lens of Association Football (soccer). Examining football in the Mediterranean island of Malta in the inter-war years of 1920–1940 this paper... more
A nation's politics and socio-cultural identity can sometimes be best considered through the lens of Association Football (soccer). Examining football in the Mediterranean island of Malta in the inter-war years of 1920–1940 this paper focuses its analysis on the phenomenon that is the game of football and the epi-phenomena it provokes and sustains. In the tiny archipelago that constitutes the Maltese islands, the game as it was played and administered in this era had implications for the British colonialists, the refugees that fled Central Europe for Maltese shores and the indigenous Maltese peoples. In these years the game was played out amidst, variously, the island's unique party politics, intra-district rivalries, and historical considerations of reputation and social class. It was also to become integral to the contestations around anti-colonial sentiment and the debates over national identity. The game in Malta was thus a facilitator of both local and global processes and played an understated role in the pursuit of independence. This examination of the specific Maltese context may well shed light upon broader processes within the international game which lies at the intersection of the global and the local.
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This paper examines the potential contribution of the work of Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) to anthropological theories of agency, resistance and subjectivity. It argues that de Certeau's work shares with contemporary anthropological... more
This paper examines the potential contribution of the work of Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) to anthropological theories of agency, resistance and subjectivity. It argues that de Certeau's work shares with contemporary anthropological theory a legacy of the counter-Enlightenment that combines a profound pessimism about modern society with an emphasis on the redemptive possibility of populism, expressivism and pluralism. Whilst in anthropology these developed into a complex theorisation of agency, resistance and subjectivity as embedded in socio-cultural context, de Certeau appears to systematically avoid a coherent theory. Rather, he offers a theology of agency, resistance and subjectivity that sees resistance through ‘tactics’ as the manifestation of an enduring counter-modern human spirit, and as inherently morally good. The paper closes with a caution against anthropologists adopting a similar ‘theological’ stance towards resistance.
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Page 1. REVIEW ESSAY An Island in between: Malta, Identity and Anthropology JON P. MITCHELL Malta is the southern-most of the southern European nation-states, lying on the very fringes of the region. As a consequence ...
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This paper examines the elaborate celebrations organized by the fans of Valletta City football (soccer) club, Malta, when they win the Maltese football league. It argues that these celebrations constitute a continuation of the... more
This paper examines the elaborate celebrations organized by the fans of Valletta City football (soccer) club, Malta, when they win the Maltese football league. It argues that these celebrations constitute a continuation of the carnivalesque. Valletta fans have a reputation for their fanatical support, and are renowned as tough-guys. Their celebrations are moments of drunken excess, which celebrate this “diamond-in-the-rough” authenticity, and satirize their opponents, which they see as inauthentic “pretenders.” The celebrations use symbolism drawn from an earlier carnival tradition—particularly the symbolism of death, and the re-enactment of funereal performance. The paper therefore argues that contemporary football celebration has replaced the carnival as a cultural form through which social antagonisms—of locality and social class—are manifest. The paper also examines the relationship between these spontaneous celebrations, and state-sponsored pageants—including the modern carnival—which are primarily aimed at tourists. [Football Celebration, Valletta, Carnival, Nostalgia, Class].