SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TEHELNE POLÉ NATIONAL STADIUM FOR BRATISLAVA AND FOOTBALL DEVELOPMENT IN SLOVAKIA

The Tehelné Pole football stadium in Bratislava is the largest and the most prestigious sports arena in Slovakia. In this paper the author characterises the specific features that distinguish this facility from other modern football stadiums. He analysed its significance to the popularisation of football in this country, using an original sports facility evaluation methodology. The author assessed the functioning of the stadium and distinguished the components influencing the effectiveness of its regionand state-wide operation, as well as on the district and city scale—in the macro and micro scales. The study demonstrates the development potential of the Slovak’s football infrastructure compared to Central Europe.

Festac 77: A Black World’s Fair

From January 15 to February 12, 1977, Nigeria hosted an extravagant international festival celebrating Africa’s cultural achievements and legacies on the continent and throughout its diaspora communities. Named the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (or Festac 77), it was modeled on Léopold Senghor’s inaugural Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (World Festival of Black Arts, or Fesman) held in Dakar in 1966 but expanded its Atlantic horizons of Africanity to include North Africa, India, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. Festac’s broader vision of the Black and African world was further bolstered by Nigeria’s oil boom, which generated windfall revenues that accrued to the state and underwrote a massive expansion of the public sector mirrored by the lavish scale of festival activities. Festac’s major venues and events included the National Stadium with its opening and closing ceremonies; the state-of-the-art National Theatre in Lagos, with exhibits and dance-dramas linking tradition to modernity; the Lagos Lagoon featuring the canoe regattas of the riverine delta societies; and the polo fields of Kaduna in the north, celebrating the equestrian culture of the northern emirates through their ceremonial durbars. If Festac 77 invoked the history of colonial exhibitions, pan-African congresses, Black nationalist movements, and the freedom struggles that were still unfolding on the continent, it also signaled Nigeria’s emergence as an oil-rich regional and global power. Festac’s significance lies less in its enduring impact than in what it reveals about the politics of festivals in postcolonial Africa.

Applications of the Atmospheric Transport and Diffusion of LES Modeling to the Spread and Dissipation of COVID-19 Aerosol Particles inside and outside the Japan National Stadium (Tokyo Olympic Stadium)

In this paper, we use an analysis function for gas diffusion known as the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Computational Prediction of Airflow over Complex Terrain (RIAM-COMPACT), which was developed for complex terrain, in Airflow Analyst software, and apply it to the spread and dissipation of a fluid layer (assuming the fluid layer contains COVID-19 particles). First, to verify the prediction accuracy of the gas diffusion using RIAM-COMPACT, comparisons with past wind tunnel test results conducted on simple and complex terrains are presented under neutral atmospheric stability. The results of the numerical simulations carried out in this study show good agreement with the wind tunnel experiments for both simple and complex terrains. Next, a model of the Japan National Stadium (Tokyo Olympic Stadium) was constructed using 3D detailed topographic Advanced World 3D Map (AW3D) data generated by combining high-resolution satellite images. We tried to reproduce the hypothetical spread and dissipation of the fluid layer (assuming the fluid layer contains COVID-19 particles) inside and outside of the Japan National Stadium using Airflow Analyst implemented with the RIAM-COMPACT analysis function for gas diffusion. We paid special attention to the effect of wind ventilation driven by natural wind. The numerical results under various scenarios show that ventilation driven by natural wind is very effective for the Japan National Stadium.

The toponymy of sporting venues: A multinomial logistic regression analysis of football stadium names

Extant scholarship on football stadium names is almost exclusively restricted to discussing naming rights deals as expressions of toponymic commodification. Departing from this rather strict focus, this paper sets out to examine the patterns of stadium names from a quantitative perspective that is based on a dataset comprising football stadiums from around the world ( n=1485). Drawing on this empirical material, the paper conducts a multinomial logistic regression analysis focused on determining the factors that influence a stadium’s name as: (a) being neutral (names carrying generic, local and/or descriptive connotations); (b) being political (names celebrating ideological values, historical dates and/or political personalities); (c) representing sports figures (names commemorating sportspersons, either former players or club officials); and (d) representing sponsorship (corporate names). The model points out that variations in stadium names are accounted for mostly by the football continental confederation, but are also influenced by a stadium’s features such as capacity, year of construction and the status of being a shared venue or designated as the national stadium.

Using movable modular grandstands in large sports stadia

<p>The King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels is for many years the national stadium for football and athletics of Belgium. Being built in 1930 and renovated in 1995, one can image the stadium is outdated and not conform the current safety regulation. Since building a completely new stadium brought too many complexities with it, the latest idea is to renovate the current stadium. A major point of attention is the fan experience in the stadium, which is hard to achieve during football games when a running track is around the pitch. Therefore, a hybrid stadium with modular seats is suggested. It allows to modify the stadium in an ideal way for each event. Two different systems are worked out to move the stands, due to structural and financial considerations. One is based on the use of air cushions, while the other system makes use of cantilever beams. For both systems, it is important to protect the running track, when the stands are in football mode. This modular system creates a lot of extra space in the stadium and will enhance the atmosphere in the arena according to each type of event.</p>

Monumental Misunderstandings

A statue of stainless steel cast in China and placed at the entrance of the new National Stadium in Mozambique sparked controversy between Chinese donors and Mozambican recipients in the period leading up to the stadium’s 2011 inauguration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Mozambican and Chinese nationals involved in the project, we explore the multiple misunderstandings surrounding the statue and show how they came to define Sino-Mozambican relations. Entextualized through materiality, the misunderstandings assumed a monumental form in the statue, and the message of mutual incomprehension continued to reverberate across the social terrain of Sino-Mozambican relations long after the statue itself had been removed. Misunderstandings, we argue, should not be dismissed as ephemeral communicative glitches, but seen as productive events that structure social relations.

Haunting and thinking from the Utopian margins: Conversation with Avery Gordon

Avery Gordon’s work exceeds the limits of disciplinary boundaries and so does her practice. She uses the term ‘itinerant’ to describe her strategies of inhabiting multidisciplinary spaces and of critiquing the worlds, peripheries and fractures produced by racial capitalism. Gordon moves as an intellectual itinerant, creating multidirectional and interdisciplinary dialogues as a sociology scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, while also collaborating with artist. Since 1997, Gordon speaks as a public intellectual on her KCSB FM radio programme, ‘No Alibis’, co-hosted with Elizabeth Robinson. She is also a visiting professor at the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. In the tradition of critical thinkers, Gordon’s work starts from a sense of urgency, exposed and developed in different ways in her major works, including her path-breaking book Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (University of Minnesota Press), her teaching and writing on prisons and the carceral system, and her most recent book The Hawthorn Archive: Letters from the Utopian Margins (Fordham University Press). In January 2018, we invited Gordon to Santiago, Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, to deliver the talk, ‘Pensar desde los Márgenes Utópicos/Haunted Futures: The Utopian Margins’. Gordon also took a guided visit through Chile’s Estadio Nacional Memoria Nacional/National Stadium National Memory site. Here is an extended conversation on the topics that frame her work, like ghosts, haunting and utopia, and on questions that emerge from the memory studies field and that are of concern to our special issue.

THE ACTION OF FOOTBALL SUPPORTERS IN SUSTAINING SPORTS STADIUM

ABSTRACT The sports stadium is an important element in organizing a football match. From a number of negative cases related to the behavior of football supporters in Indonesia, the story of the destruction of stadium facilities by the supporter is quite often become the headline in various media. One of the major events that occurred was the destruction of the Gelora Bung Karno National Stadium (GBK) facilities in the 2018 Presidential Cup final by some individuals who were thought to be supporters of the Persija Jakarta club. The biggest problem is, the stadium facilities are still in trial after renovation and will be prepared for the 2018 ASIAN Games. Encouraged by the guilty pleasure, Jakmania as Persija Jakarta's Supporters took an independent initiative by raising the #JagaGBK movement without any interference with the club's managerial. The purpose of this campaign is to maintain the surrounding environment and sports facilities inside the GBK stadium. This grassroots movement involves all Jakmania who are estimated around 45,000 people from 66 Regional Coordinators. The purpose of this study is to understand the use of campaign techniques carried out by Jakmania in performing the #JagaGBK campaign. This study used a qualitative approach with data collection techniques through in-depth interviews with three resource persons: the main chairperson of Jakmania, the Jakmania board of trustees, and the Head of branch Jakmania East Jakarta. This research resulted in findings related to strategies in assembling member participation, similarity goal associations, efforts to unite (integrative), giving rewards, delivering messages, gaining empathy, and giving coercion to members who are not involved in running #JagaGBK campaigns. This research is expected to find a formulation that can be an inspiration for other campaigns which held by the football supporters, specially regarding environmental preservation and the sports facilities.Keywords: Supporters, Football, Campaign #JagaGBK, Jakmania, and Persija Jakarta.