ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the more specific issues clustered around two related areas where much of the recent research into aspects of football culture in Britain have centred. The first is concerned with the role that football plays in the constitution and reconstitution of specific cultural and ethnic identities. The second entry point centres on debates surrounding the modernization of football in Britain, and the potential tensions that exist between the drive to modernize, and the need to retain some of the more ‘traditional’ aspects of football culture. Gerry Finn has argued that much of the debate surrounding the cultural role of Celtic in Scottish life has used as its premise an exclusive and narrow definition of ‘Scottishness’. Within the realms of social and political science, debates surrounding issues of national and cultural identity have focused on the inter-relationship between politics, economy and culture.
