ABSTRACT
Accounts of populist corporatism in the Arab region have rarely focused on the interplay of power and football within North Africa. Egypt and Tunisia boast some of the longest-standing football leagues in the region. A great deal has been narrated about nationalist strategies, political patronage and clientelism of relevance to football, including political mobilisation. Building on this foundation, this chapter uses the lens of crowd and what we call contra-crowd, seeking to capture how sets of top-down and bottom-up norm-making and mobilisation by power-holders and football groupings (ultras) open up vistas for understanding exchanges (of benefits, interests and norms) but also clashes. Through an interdisciplinary analytical kit, deploying crowd theory and social capital, this chapter attempts to capture the dynamic of crowd and contra-crowd, with special reference to selected leading football teams in Egypt and Tunisia. By recontextualising the interplay of politics and football, through reference to the 2011 uprisings, this chapter reconstructs and revises existing understandings of the ultras. The ultras, this chapter argues, are emblematic of dynamic power struggles between state and society belying top-down attempts at social control, political allegiance and formal political participation through ‘alternative’ trust networks and anti-systemic social capital.
