Playing in the city: football fandom and street protests in Buenos Aires

This essay examines a particular aspect of certain forms of social behaviour that occur at selected times and places in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In general terms, the essay adopts an ethnographic and culturally-informed perspective to identify and explicate particular dimensions of some publicly enacted relationships and activities that unfold within a large and densely populated city. More specifically, the essay asks whether the expressive activities of football fans, on the one hand, and street protesters, on the other, can be appropriately and usefully identified as constituting forms of ‘play’. Although necessarily limited in its aims and objectives, the essay does attempt to take account of some of the larger questions and analytic possibilities that emerge out of this preliminary investigation.