ABSTRACT
Beach soccer emerged on the coastal shores of Brazil in the 1920s. Through the early 1990s a compact version became popular in California, Florida, and Virginia in the United States (US) and in Southern Europe, in France, Portugal, and Spain. In the last decade the sport has expanded rapidly in Africa, Oceania, and on the Arabian Peninsula. This book attempts to address the fragmentary nature of existing knowledge of the sport and attempts to connect ‘old’ and ‘new’ knowledges, across formal and informal beach soccer communities. The chapter outlines the contexts that are crucial to situating beach soccer and the histories that frame the study within the broader landscape of football-related research. It presents the methodological approach, which governed the production of this work, its interviews, and its reviews of relevant literatures, including existing academic research, archival materials and sports writing and constructs the foundations for the first comprehensive mapping and analysis of beach soccer.
