Alienation and Dissent

Abstract

Abstract Through an examination of ultras’ disruptive claims to public space, Chapter 4 outlines the response of Irish ultras to capitalist strategies of global marketing that have popularized televised football from the United Kingdom in the Republic of Ireland. The globalization of the most competitive football leagues around the world in Ireland has atrophied spectatorship and fandom in local contexts such as the League of Ireland (LOI), making live football a niche practice and an ideal site for alternative forms of cultural production. This perceived marginality, however, has also radicalized the subjectivities of football fans that continue to hold onto traditional ideologies of support (i.e., attending all matches/that the fans are the club). At Shamrock Rovers, support in the stadium in the ultra style became its own method of asserting the tangibility of local community and real Irishness amid the broad cultural changes oriented toward the consumption of televised football.