Football Equipment as a Subject of Socio-Cultural Analysis: Possibilities and Problems of the Research Field

Abstract

The history of sports equipment is an under-researshed topic in history of sport as well as fashion studies. This article is dedicated to the socio-cultural studies of the culture of sport's fashion and design en general and football equipment in particular. The first part of the article sheds light on main difficulties of this field: the marginal status of sport as subjects of research in many academic disciplines; condishions and preservation of archives; some fundamental ideas established in specific research disciplines such as fashion studies where fashion of sport traditionally see as "no-fashion" and scholarly tradition to focus on particular topics; the problem of "visibility" of some topics in the academic research and the discourse of fans and connoisseurs, etc. In the second part of the article, is making an attempt to describe some qualities of the field of fashion of sport as a research object (such as the existence of very wide range of different subfields) and to propose a comprex interdisciplinary methodology. Finally, in the third part of this article, with the selected material is offered a range of new methods of analysis and new ways of seeing the phenomenon of the fashion and design of sport with the transfer beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines. The central place is occupied by the topics of technology and functionality, aesthetics, production and consumption. Possible approaches to work with them are analyzed using the example of football shoes (boots). The examples analyzed in this article, from our point of view, clearly confirm the thesis that the study of different aspects of production, consumption and using of sports equipment can significantly expand not only our knowledge of the history of sports and its material culture, but also other aspects of this field, including social and political ones.