The Localization of Soccer in Ghana

SAKAMOTO Miki

doi:10.5987/jjsss.14.71

The aim of this article is to describe football activity in Africa's rural villages through empirical fieldwork research. Particularly, it focuses on a dynamism that is created through football, in a localized match system which could be called “promise-binding-deposit”, but which is not only limited to football, in that this dynamism is a form of social relationship which is built into villagers' livelihood security, such as seeking employment, reciprocal help with everyday meals, and so on.<br>There are two reasons for focusing on this dynamism. The first is to break down an implicit perception among sport sociologists who deal with non-Western societies that sport is not in fact very important or that it is just a pastime recreation in a society which faces danger on the “existence” level.<br>Secondly, studies concerning sport in non-Western societies have only been focused on the space of sporting activities. Hence, they have eliminated an aspect of “presence” of people who have particular everyday livelihood problems and are trying to deal with them. However, this article shows that football players in an African village hold not only “uppermost feeling” on a pitch, but also “anxiety of life”. Football activity is strongly connected to their livelihood, and moreover it takes a very important function in it.<br>People's reciprocal help in non-Western society has been well discussed in the domain of anthropology and regional studies. This study especially refers to M. Matsuda's criticism against J. Scott's theory. Ultimately, it seeks to distill the “logic of one's livelihood” through investigating the football activities and everyday life of rural Ghana's villages.

The Localization of Soccer in Ghana

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