Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter?

The agreement is that all around this has been a sound economic exchange. BBC Sport’s Chief Football writer Phil McNulty makes that point. Manchester United are poised to make a handsome profit of some £68 million. Real Madrid will begin to make a commercial campaign with the likes of Kaka and Ronaldo by selling as much merchandise as possible with the club brand. One even wonders if it really matters that Real Madrid wins any trophies. We can speculate that not winning any trophies would bring more attention and thus fame to the club than winning anything.

Cristiano Ronaldo.
[image by Paolo Camera,
some rights reserved]

Has football become a game where winning matches or even trophies does not matter? A quick glance over the Deloitte Football Money League (2009) suggests so. Take a look at the league and you will find teams that won no trophies such as Fenerbahçe, a newcomer. But, from the point of view of the two clubs, apparently a sound investment has been made. So Ronaldo, we are told, will prove his worth and will make lots of money for himself and his clubs. 

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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"It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses."

These predicted consequences become progressively disproportionate to actual consequences. The collective response becomes equally disproportionate. Armies invade countries with dodgy dossiers that look credible to some. Mass mobilisations are enlisted to contain pandemics that are not. Massive investments are made in border control and tracking methods. Trillions and billions are printed and pumped into markets with fancy names such as "quantitative easing".

It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses. A few academics, journalists, scientists, and activists warn against disproportionate responses and call for better understanding of causes rather than focusing on predictions of consequences. "There is no justification for war." "More people are killed on the road than by terrorist attacks." "Migrants contribute to the economy and we need them." These voices are drowned out, mostly by the argument that, had there not been dramatic responses, situations would have been worse - claims that are impossible to verify. Do you remember The Millennium bug?

"…after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary."

What follows is more prophecies, prognostications, predictions, and various scenarios. Having determined the dramatic consequences to follow, explanations that fit those consequences are offered. In other words, in a strange but social twist of logic, consequences are made to explain causes. For lack of a better term, I can’t help but call these cycles of neurosis. In the twentieth century psychoanalysts called the disproportionate response to perceived dangers neurosis - a term that is no longer used in psychology to define any disorder. But it persists outside established science and many sociologists have used the term to define collective phenomena of anxiety, hysteria or unease.

I think it is apt to use the term "neurosis" and to name our response "neurotic" because the cycle that starts with a bang almost always ends with a whimper. It seems that, after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary. Is Al Qaeda really the threat that it was presented to be? Are migrants really the threat that they were represented to be? Is there really an economic collapse to the extent that has been suggested? In a short time it has already been demonstrated that the most recent cycle - swine flu - may have been an over-reaction. The headlines already declare that swine flu did not spread as fast as predicted. The BBC News reported tests showing that the swine flu virus in Mexico may be less virulent than first feared, and asked "Did Mexico over-react on swine flu?" It is as though it was only Mexico that over-reacted.

Ten years ago the New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast, introduced "the neuro" as "the first official worldwide currency" in one of her cartoons. It may have been prescient. We really need to understand why it has become so. What are the reasons for the collective neurosis of our times?

Find Out More 

Isin, E.F. (2004) The Neurotic Citizen, Citizenship Studies, 8 (3), 217-235.

Horney, K. (1937) The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York, W.W. Norton.

Fromm, E. (1944) Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis, American Sociological Review, 9 (4), 380-384.

Roz Chast, The Back Page, “Introducing the Neuro - The First Official Worldwide Currency,” The New Yorker, April 26, 1999, p. 196.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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Yet it turns out that the war was both an escape from and the cause of real troubles — all wars can make that claim. These troubles concerned the fact that many soldiers perished during the war were poor peasants who were not represented in the assembly (ecclesia), which was the exclusive domain aristocratic warrior-citizens. Many peasants were poor mostly because they cultivated the land as loans from aristocratic warriors.

The Pantheon, Athens.
[image © copyright Photos.com]

At this time Athens was governed as an oligarchy and aristocratic families held land indefinitely. While land was inalienable the right to use it could be mortgaged. Peasants could receive loans by sharing their rights to the product of the land. The peasant-debtor ‘agreed’ to cultivate the land as hektemor, or sixth-partner, surrendering five-sixths of the product to the aristocrat-creditor and retaining the rest. Such mortgaged land was physically marked by horoi, or mortgage stones as concrete symbols of mortgage slavery.

There had been ongoing struggles by peasants to free themselves from mortgage slavery but the situation was exacerbated by the war as many peasants fell into abject poverty and faced debt enslavement (sold as slaves). So there was really a credit crunch in the sense that peasants defaulted on their loans and were sold as slaves. The problem was to find peasants who would cultivate the land and generate income for aristocrats. (Going to war with credit never seems to work.)

Then Solon was elected archon, or governor, c. 594 BC. His first act was to free the land and destroy the horoi. His act, known as the seisachtheia, or ‘shaking-off of the burdens,’ cancelled all debts, freed the peasants and gave land to its cultivators. Solon’s second act was the ban on the mortgaging of land and mortgage slavery.

This was a bold act. Solon not only canceled all debt (which was not incurred as money) but he also abolished enslavement for debt, destroying the horoi. This act of destroying the horoi became a symbol of liberation. Solon’s reform was retrospective as well as prospective: he brought back people from overseas slavery who no longer spoke the Attic language.

More importantly, as Gregory Vlastos taught us long time ago, Solon’s act was much more than cancelling debts. Until then aristocrats had claimed the giving of justice as their exclusive prerogative. But Solon made justice -- or rather claiming justice -- an essential aspect of everyday rather than divine politics.

Could the government have not shaken off of all the mortgages owed by the poor? Could it not have abolished mortgage slavery? Instead, by part-nationalising banks, the government essentially mortgaged our future by bailing them out. So rather than shaking off of the burden of the poor our government actually doubled it. Perhaps we should rethink the remit of our Poet Laureate.

Solon’s Fragments 30, 31

“...Whereas I, before the people had attained to any of the things for the sake of which they had drawn my chariot, brought it to a standstill. A witness I have who will support this claim full well in the tribunal of Time --the mighty mother of the Olympian deities, black Earth, from whose bosom once I drew out the pillars everywhere implanted; and she who was formerly enslaved is now free. Many men I restored to Athens, their native divinely-founded, men who justly or unjustly had been sold abroad, and other who through pressure of need had gone into exile, and who through wanderings far and wide no longer spoke the Attic tongue. Those here at home who were reduced to shameful slavery, and trembled at the caprices of their masters, I made free. These things I wrought by main strength, fashioning that blend of force and justice that is law, and I went through to the close as I had promised.”

From p. 215 of The Work and Life of Solon: With a Translation of His Poems by Kathleen Freeman

Find Out More

‘Solon, the Horoi and the Hektemoroi’ by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
in Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays, edited by David Harvey, Robert Parker and Peter Thonemann, published by Oxford University Press

The Work and Life of Solon: With a Translation of His Poems by Kathleen Freeman
published by The University of Wales Press

‘Solonian Justice’ by Gregory Vlastos
in Studies in Greek Philosophy, edited by Daniel W. Graham
published by Princeton University Press

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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Model T Ford.
[image by me'nthedogs, some rights reserved]

Between the time when Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908 and Jack Kerouac wrote his classic On the Road in 1951 (published in 1957) the automobile became the most ubiquitous technology that affected every aspect of American and European cultures in the twentieth century. While the computer and Internet generation may not see it that way, the automobile is the technology that had the biggest impact on the twentieth century. (Perhaps nuclear fission and the moving image are the other two.) Again, the numbers that one can cite about this impact are mind numbing: annual road deaths (thousands), average commute times (hours), carbon dioxide emissions (tonnes), suburban sprawl (acres), oil dependency (barrels), and social isolation (priceless). The automobile has altered the character of the city in the twentieth century like no other technology and like no other time. The walkable city has now either disappeared or is consigned to the central areas of a few cities with outrageous house prices (since there is so little left of it) that persist despite the credit crunch. As both Steffen Böhm and Brian Ladd argue in their recently published books even for those who’d rather not drive to work there is very little choice left. Has this all been worth it?

I think not. The automobile has been amongst the most destructive technologies deployed to remake the modern city and its countryside. There was nothing inexorable about the rise of the automobile and the way in which it destroyed the city. Automakers aggressively pushed train companies out the market and bullied governments into building roads rather than investing in green public transportation systems. Generations of people have been saying these things since at least the 1920s with much more eloquence and knowledge than I can here. But automakers (just like tobacco companies) have invested billions of dollars in marketing and advertising to seduce people into thinking that the automobile and driving are ‘cool’ and ‘fun’. By changing the city and countryside so radically the automakers made the automobile necessary — at an enourmous cost.

Perhaps we should shed no tears for automakers (at least no more than we shed for bankers) if not for the workers and their families. Could we not find a way to employ all those workers in productive (rather than destructive) industries? Can we not invest all those bailout billions in rebuilding cities and creating new public transportation systems? It is conceivable that one day automakers (if they survive) will be treated like tobacco companies. If there is a clever lawyer out there who wants to get the ball rolling with a class-action lawsuit against all automakers (for all the destruction they have caused), I am sure there are people who are ready to sign up. Given that oil production has reached its peak, the break in oil prices is only fleeting and is estimated to dramatically increase. Will we then see the automobile off the road?

Find out More

• Against Automobility. By Steffen Böhm. Published by Blackwell.
• Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age. By Brian Ladd. Published by University of Chicago Press.
• Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America. By Cotton Seiler. Published by University of Chicago Press.
• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). By Tom Vanderbilt. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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The debate on the war on terror and especially in relation to Afghanistan and Iraq is converging toward a consensus: that it has gone awry and that these occupations have been grand failures. Pankaj Mishra’s review in the Guardian illustrates how this consensus plays itself out and concludes,

A gracious acceptance of the limits of US firepower may not be forthcoming from the next administration, which will face the hard choice to get out or fight on. Indeed, failure may make it even more determined to maintain the pride of US arms and the image of the mightiest power on earth.

So the consensus is that while the US may not admit or accept it, by virtue of its failure the war on terror shows the weakness of force.

Money that used to be spent on American goods now got diverted abroad

What troubles me about this consensus (and the analysts that accept it) is that I don’t understand why the war on terror is so easily understood as a failure. Against which benchmarks will we measure its success? We cannot use the official reasons because they have been so vague from the get go and so that’s a non-starter. This is why I find it astonishing that many commentators are almost at pains to keep the war on terror and the financial crisis as unrelated events. If there is a relation it is simply put as the ‘cost’ of the war but not how it has been financed.

Soldier in Iraq.
[image by Army.mil, some rights reserved]

The fact is, the war on terror has been a great success — until now. It has redistributed an unprecedented three trillion dollars in the US and some twenty billion pounds in Britain from the wage-earning classes to the capital-owning classes especially those whose fortunes are bound up with the military-technological-industrial complex as Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes argue in a new book: The three trillion dollar war: the true cost of the Iraq conflict. Why call this a success? As historian Charles Tilly argued, capital, coercion and state constitute a vicious cycle at least since the birth of modern capitalism in his book Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. The war on terror has mobilized more capital than ever before. But how it has done this brings the credit crunch and war together.

In a recent interview with CNN, Stiglitz provides three reasons for the financial crisis. While he cites the well-known reasons such as lack of regulation and greed, he draws attention to a third as the decisive:

The coup d’grace [sic] was the Iraq War, which contributed to soaring oil prices. Money that used to be spent on American goods now got diverted abroad. The Fed took seriously its responsibility to keep the economy going. It did this by replacing the tech bubble with a new bubble, a housing bubble. Household savings plummeted to zero, to the lowest level since the Great Depression. It managed to sustain the economy, but the way it did it was shortsighted: America was living on borrowed money and borrowed time.

Stiglitz and Bilmes further elaborate on this in their book. In essence the argument is that the war was financed with a false credit economy. Yet, it seems to me, that it is important not to interpret the credit crunch as a miscalculation or the consequence of shortsightedness as Stiglitz does. Rather, it is the result of a false economy that transformed a significant fraction of wage-earning classes into investors and thereby into a fraction of capital-owning classes (not only with property ownership but also with stocks, shares, options, funds and bonds all financed against the underlying future value of house property). That the bubble burst is not at issue here as Stiglitz says it was borrowed money and borrowed time. Yet, as insightful as Stiglitz is the problem with his response to the crisis is as astonishing as the mainstream media’s: let’s now regulate markets better. We ought to know better.

Aren’t wars always financed with false credit economies? As sociologist Peter Saunders described it, Britain (and America) has become ‘a nation of homeowners’ at least during the postwar period.

This has required the creation of a mass market of single-family dwellings owned by their occupiers, which in turn transformed a fraction of wage-earning classes into investors or a fraction of the capital-owning classes. The integration of the housing market with two other markets—the military and technology—was necessary for its operation. Military expansion continually revolutionized technological innovation and spurred the creation of a global consumer industry, which, in turn, directly contributed to the expansion of housing markets. Has not this been the spine of postwar capitalism? At the height of the Vietnam War, an economist Seymour Melman aptly called it ‘Pentagon Capitalism’ in Pentagon capitalism: The Political Economy of War - a book as relevant today as it was some forty years ago. If Pentagon capitalism seemed to reach a crisis in the 1970s (the so-called the oil crisis) did it not get out of it by various wars? Is it surprising that America (and Britain) have been continuously at war for 30 years since the 1970s?

The current crisis makes what another sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, said so prescient. In The social structures of the economy he insisted that because the postwar middle classes (a fraction of wage-earners transformed into investors),

find themselves drawn to live beyond their means, on credit, they discover the rigours of economic necessity almost as painfully as did the industrial workers of a different era, particularly sanctions imposed on them by the banks, to which they had looked to work miracles on their behalf

Now the banks are looking to governments for miracles on their behalf. To think all this was because of greed seems simply naïve. To think bailouts, recapitalization or nationalization will create miracles without asking tough questions about the logic of the postwar economy seems folly. When governments need miracles they turn to wars. That has been the vicious cycle.

Find out more

Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War
by Seymour Melman, published by McGraw Hill

The Social Structures Of The Economy
by Pierre Bourdieu, published by Polity

The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost Of The Iraq Conflictby Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, published by W.W. Norton

Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992
by Charles Tilly, published by Blackwell

A nation of home owners
by Peter Saunders, published by Unwin Hyman

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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To leave these traces is a reflection of that understanding of finitude. By giving meaning to life, which remains forever mysterious, we deal with that mystery and leaving traces of ourselves is a way of doing that. To put it in another (perhaps in a lighter) way, we not only constantly engage in ‘reputation management’, as consulting spinners might put it, in this life but also after our own death.

One might object to this idea of being human as either ethnocentric (i.e., Western) or an ideology of the creative classes. For millennia many humans came and went without a trace, one might say. But that doesn’t negate that their understanding of their finitude has always driven humans. The ways and means of leaving traces are unequal but always present. In fact, social historians have been working hard to recover the traces of those ordinary men and women who did not have the means or ways to preserve or maintain traces of their lives. The Internet provides new ways and means of leaving traces. I don’t know how many millions of people are on it. But quite a few are leaving traces via various ways and by now well-known means. There are rapidly increasing traces of lives on the Internet. From wedding and travel pictures, diaries and video clips to announcements and just about anything else you can imagine traces of lives are being recorded. People move from site to site, avatar to avatar, identity to identity and keep expanding their traces in texts, audio and video.

Without prejudice to the quality or meaning of such traces it is good to remember that the ways of leaving traces about oneself was for long limited to mostly educated or wealthier (sometimes both) classes.

But the Internet may change all that. I am curious about the traces that we leave on the Internet because it is fairly new and because the generation that participated in its creation and formation is relatively young and is yet to experience finitude. As such the number of dead people on the Internet is small and so to are the traces that can be investigated.

Once in a while when an exceptional or unusual death occurs many journalists and others turn to these traces to assemble together some meaning about the life that has just disappeared. It is not even correct to say that it has disappeared. The person may be deceased but life on the Internet remains through its traces. All those texts, videos, images, and audio begin to take on new meaning now that their creator has deceased. Beyond assembling together a meaning from these traces I am wondering how will this experience affect our concept of death? The posthumous fame or infamy that awaits us on the basis of traces we have left is a curious thing. I wonder if the newly emerging sites such as Internet memorial walls and Internet cemeteries are early responses to assemble our own traces to be made available upon our death—a kind of Internet autobiography?

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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This is rather, well, hüzünlü, if not sad. It gives an image of the city that withdraws into itself longing for its future to come or for its past that’s gone. Istanbul and hüzün are perhaps closely associated. But this city is so vibrant, so creative and so energetic that I feel hüzün is only one of its moods.

Hüzünlü Bosphorus
[image by Engin Isin © copyright Engin Isin]

Another of its moods that I find so seductive is keyif. Like hüzün this Turkish word is untranslatable into at least English. Also like hüzün it shares meanings with various words such as enjoyment, delight, and pleasure and yet it is not captured fully by any of them. Unlike hüzün, which reaches to the past or future or both, keyif is about the present. It is about being suspended in the present and its intoxicating nothingness. I say ‘intoxicating’ for a reason. One of its meanings is being high. The French word jouissance (enjoyment) especially known for its usage by Jacques Lacan comes closest to keyif. But Lacan associated jouissance with sexual pleasure while keyif is really not about sex. Keyif is sensual but not necessarily sexual. What keyif shares with jouissance is that emotional state or mood as a suspension in the present.

Keyifli Bosphorus
[image by Engin Isin © copyright Engin Isin]

Like hüzün, I think keyif is peculiarly associated with Istanbul. This city is a city of spaces of keyif. These spaces manage to put you in the mood of keyif. That’s why this blog is called şehrin keyfi, which means the city of jouissance. But now that I disassociated keyif from sexual pleasure you should not think of spaces of keyif as including spaces of sexual creativity! Yes, there are plenty of those in Istanbul (as I am writing this I can look out my window to see a transgendered person across the street offering his/her services for the libidinal economy) but the spaces of keyif I have in mind are those spaces of the city that invite its inhabitants to suspend themselves in the present if only for a moment. In a city of intense vitality and energy, this not only means seeking relief from that intensity but also managing it by enjoying it.

There are many spaces of keyif but I think one of their shared orientations is either catching a view of the Bosphorus or being on it. It seems for centuries mosques, churches, synagogs, fountains, parks, cafes, and many other public spaces have had this orientation. It seems every architect and builder in the city has been in competition to catch a view of the Bosphorus (often with disastrous consequences especially in recent decades). Every building, it seems, tries so hard to orient itself to the Bosphorus in order to catch a glimpse of its glorious glisten and glitter. Sipping coffee or tea and catching the view (with a delicious desert) is an indispensable keyif that suspends you in time. It is almost as if when you catch that view you feel you are spared the hustle and bustle of the city and while you are of it you are not in the city just for a moment.

To have keyif means to lose oneself not only in time but space and to catch a view only to find that we are all thrown together in this madness called the city and then say ‘I might as well enjoy it’. Rather than being its opposite perhaps keyif is another side of hüzün.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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Are we witnessing a moment in history when the place of emotion in politics (and public life) is taking the centre stage? More broadly, are we witnessing the emergence of a new image of 'being political' (used to be called ‘man’) who is not only 'rational' but also 'emotional'? The signs of these shifts are everywhere. It is almost as if we are back in the seventeenth century and the battle between what was then called 'reason' versus 'passion' is being waged again though the outcome is by no means certain. Throughout that century a new image of being political emerged where 'his' reasons triumphed over 'his' passions. This image dominated public life since then and what it means to appear in public always carried with it a strong element of being reasonable (as opposed to passionate) and rational (as opposed to emotional). In fact, this was one of the main arguments against including women in politics until the twentieth century: women ostensibly represented the irrational and passionate aspects of being human and such qualities did not belong in public space. Reading arguments by mostly male thinkers against the suffragette movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I am struck by how much emphasis was placed on women as e‘motional beings and how they were incapable of sound judgement in political affairs.

TImes have changed. First, of course, as the suffragettes had claimed, women proved themselves perfectly capable of sound judgement in political affairs, if not, in fact, more so than men. Throughout the twentieth century women have occupied significant political and public positions. As studies repeatedly show, the male world still dominates but it is no longer the same. Yet, it can be, and as many have said, women have occupied these positions by mostly acting in the image of man: rational, reasonable, calculative and instrumental. It was a survival strategy in a man'’s world. ’ Then, in the second part of the twentieth century, women began conducting themselves in public as ‘women’. (In the social sciences this was interpreted as a change from a politics of identity to a politics of difference.) With this interpretation, however, we risk fixing definitions of ‘'man' and 'w‘oman' and associating them with specific qualities: men with rationality and women with emotion. That’ is precisely why in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries many have approached such identities with flexible and fluid meaning rather than thinking that masculinity was lodged in the male body and femininity was lodged in the female body. (In the social sciences this was seen as the birth of cultural politics as opposed to politics of identity or of difference.)

The tears in Hillary Clinton’ eyes may well be one of those moments where such changes are crystallized. I have not encountered a comment by Obama on her tears but John Edwards, the third running candidate, did imply that it showed she is not capable of leadership: "I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business." I guess that's why Edwards is not in serious contention since he is clearly not reading the politics of affect that surrounds him. The remarkable aspect of the success of Clinton against Obama in New Hampshire is that that rare display of emotion may well have finally countered what many are attracted to Obama for: passion and emotion. I suggest that only when Hillary Clinton departed from the script that often constituted her as the reasonable and experienced leader and displayed that she was involved in politics emotionally that she was able to mount a challenge to Obama's passionate politics. Now was this strategic? If one means by strategy intentional action, I would wager that it certainly was not strategic. But if one means by strategy an intuitive orientation toward that which works, I would think that Hillary's tears in her eyes were strategic.  

I don't mean to suggest that emotion has now become legitimate strategy (in both senses) in politics under all circumstances or that women's’ entry into politics has brought about this change. There are many signs that indicate the image of being political now includes being emotional and many signs that men as well as women are caught in the production of this image. How this image affects the politics of our times is a broad issue that requires investigation.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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