Sport possesses the capability to not only reproduce or reinforce social barriers and structural inequalities, but also harness the potential to transcend them. Sport is regarded as a means of upward social mobility through economic success or enhanced social status. Roots Premier League asserts itself to be India’s first celebrity and amateur social football league, supposedly having pioneered the now immensely popular concept of the short-format football league in 2016. Two three-month long seasons of men’s, women’s, as well as a co-ed league take place every weekend in a private turf in Bandra West. The organizers’ professed goal is to promote football, fitness, and community, by building social networks around competitive amateur sports. Roots assures its upmarket sponsors a direct connection to their target audiences, thus associating a class character to itself and its community. The community space becomes a site for socialization to celebrate existing social arrangements and build networks, facilitating the reproduction of elite classes.
This paper draws on the ongoing fieldwork research conducted across Mumbai as part of the author’s doctoral research work on youth sporting culture in urban spaces. Ethnographic methods such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and group discussions, studied the experiences of various interest groups– players, spectators, ground staff, and organizers. An individual’s motivations, attitudes and aspirations are a product of their specific cultural contexts and respective social locations. The socialization processes’, shaped by class, caste, age and gender relations, attempts to culturally integrate diverse groups into a community helps us reveal and understand various manifest contradictions between involved peoples, ideologies or discourses. We survey the strategies developed by individuals or groups looking to penetrate or assimilate into elite social circles made accessible through sport. How are identities shaped or transformed as social capital is built, accumulated, and distributed through emergent socialities.
