A Change in Progress: The Clube Náutico Capibaribe’s Fans “Home” Exchange Under Roberto Damatta’s House and Street View

Abstract

One of the new arenas built for the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014, Arena Pernambuco, became a partnership between the consortium responsible for its management and the Clube Náutico Capibaribe. The association promoted a new situation for the red-white fans: moving from Estádio dos Aflitos, which brought much of the club’s history, to the Arena Pernambuco, a new stadium model. Thus, the objective of this work is to understand how Náutico’s fans signified those social spaces. Thus, we conducted an ethnography of communication, based on observational records of interactions between fans held on visits to Náutico matches between April and December 2013. We also used Roberto DaMatta theoretical perspective as lens for interpretation. Our findings evidenced two points of view in the process of signification of such social spaces: one linked to particular values of the community, resulting from relations and ties constructed over time, and other based on rules and values ​​of a wider social order, current nowadays. These aspects contribute to think of soccer as a significant element in the dynamics between social spaces and practices and how this dynamic also reflects the economic dimension of that sport.