Football, Romanità, and the Search for Stasis - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 155

(1998), who study football fans and cultures, but also from authors like simon
martin (2004), michael herzfeld (2009), and paul baxa (2010) who study the
more specific social and political fields in which Roman football and fandom
occur.
while not necessarily designed to address the built environment of Rome,
a topic that martin, herzfeld, and baxa—like painter (2005)—cover extensively,
this study nonetheless converses with those authors on the topic of romanità and
its ability to influence contemporary Romans. as a concept, romanità is rather
self-congratulatory, which might be considered an oddity given how prominent-
ly it was used by fascism (see Gentile 1996; falasca-Zamponi 1997; Griffin 2007;
baxa 2010). Romanità does have a long history, having been used by both liberal
and fascist italy as a universalizing narrative designed to give italians a national
worldview. at the same time, romanità is the exclusive purview of the Romans, a
discourse of cultural and historical particularity and uniqueness.
This understanding of romanità comes from the competitive environment
of professional football. in europe, but especially italy, football teams are deeply
ingrained aspects of well-developed local identities. Rome is no different in this
than udine, florence, or palermo, for instance. unlike those cities, however,
Rome has two high-level professional teams and, hence, a divided populace. and
while every italian city can boast a long history of unique economic, social, and
political developments, none can rival the depth or importance of Rome's contri-
butions to italian and world history. Thus, the field of symbols and images that
Rome provides to its citizens and football fans is arguably the broadest and deep-
est in italy. These symbols, such as the lupa Capitolina (Capitoline she-wolf—
henceforth lupa) and the Roman imperial eagle, not only represent the teams
that use them, but also influence the ideologies utilized by their fans to identify
with the city itself. This is important to remember when assessing the role played
by football and fandom in the city.
During 18 months (2006-2008) of ethnographic study among as Roma's
ultras, i learned how football operates as a nexus between the global nature of
capital and human labor flows, and the lived experience of a highly local (and
localist) cultural system. with european football teams fielding many foreign
players and being sponsored by multinational corporations, local fans are forced
to come to terms with the business aspects of the game that often overshadow the
local meaningfulness of the teams they follow. in Rome, this has never been more
apparent as in 2011, when a consortium led by american Thomas Di benedetto
bought as Roma with an eye toward turning the team into a “global brand.” fur-
thermore, the fans themselves negotiate the inter- and intranational migration of
peoples. This chapter, therefore, wrestles with the discontent, but also spectacle,
produced by globalization, while also suggesting that the local Roman context is
constantly reimagined through the lens of football fandom.