"What are you going to say about anthropology and football?" Maybe disgust and social class, for 5 minutes (and coding homework)


Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Abstract. There is a football management university in the city, but it is several universities away from my home and probably in a tough league of its own. But perhaps it will somehow emerge from that league and compete against us. I doubt that but it is possible. What can we say as social anthropologists, if I even count? I shall write on disgust, the professions, and social class, somewhat speculatively as it applies to the footballer. I assume the professional footballer experiences disgust at a player who cannot do his/her craft as required, especially if there because of non-footballing reason. And I assume that the footballer assumes that most others are analogous: the surgeon, the psychiatrist, the mathematician, and more. I raise the suspicion that this is actually not true, though perhaps the footballer will say: "I too know this, from experience of life, believe it or not."
Draft version: version 1 (1st January 2025)
Software used (freeware): Google docs, google.com


In this essay is a trick
That will give you a little kick


There is a football management university in the town centre but perhaps it has little or nothing to do with me. Anyway, it is a football city, Manchester - what the Americans call the sport of soccer - and we should probably write something on football, I am thinking. But I don't really know that much about football. I am interested in the theme of disgust and football.


Spanish footballers are famous for being neat and cunning passers of the ball, or some of them are: to the casual English fan the team is associated with excellent passing. "Tippy tappy football" is what the English fans fondly call it. "Tika taka" is the Spanish name and that is racist I fear, a reference to Chicken Tikka Masala, a popular curry home grown in the UK. Leaving aside names, recently I wrote a comedy sketch about that way of playing football. There was once a Spanish footballer who played in England for "seven seasons," named Cesc Fabergas. He was an excellent passer of the ball - that is beyond reasonable doubt, to us anyway. In my sketch, he returns to Barcelona after his many years in hurley burly England. And he passes the ball, of course. But the ball goes in the air, and significantly so. It is accurate and we regard it as beautiful enough, I suppose. The most famous Spanish players, Xavi and Iniesta, are disgusted and vomit, however.


Here I want to distinguish two "scopes of disgust here":
1. The player is disgusted by such in-the-air passing by a member of their own team, not by other teams. (Iniesta?)
2. The player is disgusted by anyone who passes like that anywhere. (Xavi?)
I guess Iniesta, as portrayed here - by the way, who knows which is which really? Dear Scholes, I'm already lost, Yours Faithfully - would say that everyone has disgust according to the system they work within. "The good doctor and the lawyer and the logician too all have their things that they are disgusted by, according to the system they use. In these professions, perhaps it does not vary much with society or institution, but perhaps it does. For example, that is how we do law; this is how they do law!" If Iniesta could speak as we do and lived a while back, there would be no need for Mary Douglas? Our puppet Iniesta, that is - a puppet Iniesta has probably been ordered, fortunately or unfortunately.


Anyway, I am not so sure if everyone is as disgusted as my puppet Iniesta would predict. ("Even puppet Iniesta is banned, buddy!") Imagine that you want to climb a social class. What you find is that you endure very hard times. And who is going to be there in hard times? You conclude that only your family will be. But your family cannot all meet the strict craft standards. So it seems the only way for someone to pursue this upward mobility project is to abandon "I can now meet the requirements and I am disgusted if anyone else here cannot do it. How are they getting in? It is cheating, some abuse of privilege."


Thus I am not sure if logicians are disgusted by publications with blatant logic errors. But you know what some might say: "My family are generally good enough, so I am disgusted, but I have been in the business for 150 years; so can you sort it out?"
 
I have a fairytale opening, which I wrote some years back. The tribe are going on a hunt. The chief's son has not passed his requirements to go on the hunt. Someone objects that he should not be going. "It is the chief son," the objector is firmly told, implying that an exception must be made. The objector leaves in disgust. That night the craft goddess appears to someone else. She says, "The chief's son should not be going on the hunt." This fellow replies. "I am not the person you are looking for. I am a sensible fellow. And it is the chief's son." The craft goddess says, "Are you stupid? Are you thick? I am a goddess! Prevent the chief's son from going on the hunt." How does this story end? I am not sure exactly but it probably does not end well.


Hey, what is going on? Who are all these footballers who wish to appear in this essay? "I am Robinho. Father of the Manchester City of your heart." "My name is Juan Sebastian Veron. I am so good in my home town." "I am Berbatov. Um, I prefer my name in Times New Roman." "I am Cristiano Ronaldo. I do step overs and also free kicks. Please pay attention to those." "My name is Maria Tsvetaeva." "My name is Anna Akhmatova." Go away, the pair of you, this is over!


Appendix (coding homework)
Get the "user" to specify the number of meals. Then the ingredients for the first meal, the second meal, the third meal, etc. Then ask, "What disgusts them?" Then print the meals which are disgusting. 


Reference
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.
(A woman: "I find that food disgusting. I can't help it. Everyone else likes that and you are supposed to. It is nothing to do with our system or even my personal system." Douglas: "I don't study women, okay, if they even exist.")