Football’s Role in How Societies Remember

Abstract

Based on several phases of ethnographic work over two decades, this chapter demonstrates how football creates the ideal conditions for debates over national social memories related to the Palestinian-Bedouin divide in Jordan. Social memory processes in football arenas represent two related social phenomena. Firstly, collective, historical memories are produced; Secondly, these collective memories are also enacted and embodied during football matches, through their symbolic and physical confrontations. Palestinian-Jordanian encounters on the football field have been especially important in this context, having embodied the memory of the 1970 civil war and having served as a medium through which to reprocess it. For Palestinians, as a stateless ethno-national group who lack the formal national institutions to preserve their national past in the form of museums or archeological digs, football, and particularly the al-Wihdat team, has become an important alternative. While until the early 1990s the fans’ lyrics emphasized identification with the armed struggle, today the dominant themes are Palestinian common descent, unity, and refugee identity. At the same time, al-Wihdat’s alter-ego, FC Faisaly, has been a focus of East Bank Jordanian nationalism, emphasizing tribal roots and values, Islamic tradition, Hashemite loyalty, and the tribal roots of the monarchy.