South American Stadiums with Chris Gaffney

Chris Gaffney’s Temples of the Earthbound Gods led the FSF fall lineup, introducing a Latin Americanist geographer’s perspective to our group.

His book establishes the stadium as a unique analytical tool for understanding football, the city, and society. Temples is ambitious in its temporal and thematic scope, incorporating analysis on race, masculinity, and class in a comparative perspective.

Gaffney treated us to anecdotes from his experiences in Brazil and Argentina, including attending a particularly violent Sacachispas match in the Argentine fourth division. (See FSF Forum member David Keyes’s review of a documentary made on Sacachispas FC here) Questions touched on the structure of the book, using Chris’s stadium method elsewhere, and Argentine masculinity. Participants: David Keyes, David Roberts, Alex Galarza, Peter Alegi

Listen to an audio recording of the session here (for educational/personal use only).