Fishing for community: England fans at the 2006 FIFA World Cup

This essay intends to provide an illustrative application of contemporary theorizations of community in the context of England football fans presence in Germany for the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals. Drawing upon Maffesoli’s concept of the neo‐tribe, and Scott Lash’s sense of the postmodern reflexive community, the travelling groups of England fans are presented as a series of fleeting, performative ‘communities’. The sense of temporality and consumerist desire for belonging which is revealed builds on Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of the ‘cloakroom community’ which provides a metaphor for the gatherings conjured by consumer society, and associated events such as the FIFA World Cup finals.