John Hughson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096150
- eISBN:
- 9781526115331
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096150.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
Chapter 7 engages with some of the existing academic writing on the 1966 World Cup, pertaining to England’s victory, from the fields of history, cultural studies and sociology. It offers an against ...
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Chapter 7 engages with some of the existing academic writing on the 1966 World Cup, pertaining to England’s victory, from the fields of history, cultural studies and sociology. It offers an against the grain reading of evidence used by academics in their arguments. I suggest that the determined effort to be critical has resulted in a counter bias, involving, in some instances, a selective interpretation of events. I also contend that the public response to the so-called ‘myth of 1966’, proposed by academics, risks being overstated in two ways. Firstly, in presumption that the public readily buy into media discourse on the World Cup victory and, secondly, that subsequent football related festivities drawing on 1966 related imagery are necessarily an expression of the type of nationalistic sentiment assumed by critics.Less
Chapter 7 engages with some of the existing academic writing on the 1966 World Cup, pertaining to England’s victory, from the fields of history, cultural studies and sociology. It offers an against the grain reading of evidence used by academics in their arguments. I suggest that the determined effort to be critical has resulted in a counter bias, involving, in some instances, a selective interpretation of events. I also contend that the public response to the so-called ‘myth of 1966’, proposed by academics, risks being overstated in two ways. Firstly, in presumption that the public readily buy into media discourse on the World Cup victory and, secondly, that subsequent football related festivities drawing on 1966 related imagery are necessarily an expression of the type of nationalistic sentiment assumed by critics.
