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The People's Game: Football, State and Society in East Germany. By Alan McDougall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. v + 362. Cloth $125.00. ISBN 978-1107052031.
In The People's Game, Alan McDougall analyzes football in order to explore relations between state and society in socialist East Germany. Rejecting a dichotomized stateversus-society model, McDougall makes three principal arguments about how the study of football illuminates everyday life in East Germany. First, football constituted a site of Eigen-Sinn (self-assertion) for East German citizens, enabling them to cultivate identities-individual, local, regional, national, and international-which both contradicted and sometimes existed alongside the identities laid out for them by the state. Second, football showcased the state's limits and dysfunctionality, especially as it often failed to direct football towards desired political ends. Third, football functioned as a "liminal activity" (30), creating a "contested space" (54) where the interests of citizens and the state sometimes came together, sometimes diverged, and often involved substantial "give and take" (151).
McDougall shows how football in East Germany was at once unsuccessful internationally for both the national team and club teams, yet vibrant and dynamic regionally and locally, featuring heated competitions and loyal and engaged fans. Semiprofessional and recreational footballers alike had no choice but to reckon with the state, depending on it for access to athletic facilities and opportunities. Likewise, the state, in its efforts to co-opt football towards socialist goals, had to adapt to...