Product details
- ISBN 9781789209273
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 11 Mar 2022
- Publisher: Berghahn Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Since the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. This book unpacks young Cameroonians' football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.
Uroš Kovač is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society. He is a social anthropologist researching gender, migration, religion and development, often through the prism of sports in Africa.
