Field notes of my observations during fieldwork covered several spaces and themes, and if anything these notes highlighted the difficulty of limiting where and when fieldwork begins and ends, especially in an urban context during a time of crisis. I regarded watching a local sports programme from the comfort of my couch or going out for drinks with friends who had nothing to do with sports as valid and informative ‘research activities’ that I relied on as much as time spent in the stadium and the club. Fieldwork was further complicated by the fact that I was implementing research in the city where I have lived for the majority of my life. As I will explain in the next chapter, I was not always readily perceived as a
researcher within my home city. In practice ‘participant observation’ often meant exercising an increased sensitivity to, and a critical examination of, certain issues. It also included the practice of keeping field notes about incidents and conversations – even with close friends - that in earlier times would have gone unnoticed as parts of my usual day-to-day life25. I lived in west Beirut, in an area neither particularly close to the sites of the Nejmeh club stadium and office nor of relevance to the sports scene. My position as a city insider exerted its own effects on the research process: whenever I finished an interview, or when the working day at the Nejmeh office ended, people automatically assumed that I would have other business to attend to or family that I needed to spend time with. Accordingly, my time with research participants had to be meticulously planned and carefully justified to them. ‘Community’ as well as ‘fieldwork’ were loosely defined and encompassed broader aspects of my life in Beirut at the time. Bearing the above in mind, I can highlight some of the more easily defined ‘spaces’ where my participant observation activities took place:
- Nejmeh Sports Club office and the surrounding neighbourhood: For the majority of my fieldwork, the office was rarely used by board members and fans, but was
25 I obtained the consent of all friends I engaged in discussion about the social and political context in Lebanon. That said, the boundary between ordinary day-to-day conversations and research as a
‘participant observer’ in a city where I habitually resided is almost impossible to define. In addition, many of those friends were also researchers, writers, and activists who have provided feedback and advice as I was doing fieldwork and writing beyond that provided by a ‘research participant’.
mainly a space used by administrators. Occasionally players, or fans from the neighbourhood, visited if they had administrative concerns. These uses meant that it was not very easy for me to justify my presence there, unless I had interviews to conduct. Later, to get around this problem, I invented for myself the responsibility of supporting one of the staff members’ efforts to publish a book about the club’s history. My presence was legitimised by the hours I spent every day scanning this man’s old photos of the club and its members. The office was located in Tariq Al-Jadidah, a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood and a stronghold of the Hariri Establishment at the time of my fieldwork. It was also home to the municipal stadium, the offices of rival Ansar football club, and the residence of several football fans I regularly encountered. Although I did not live in the neighbourhood, I kept note of developments I could observe and of the posters and banners its residents displayed, as well conversations I had with shopkeepers and residents.
- Nejmeh Club stadium was another place I visited regularly. It was open daily until sunset, and Anis, the staff member responsible for team logistics and the stadium lived on-site. I also spent some time there during the day, mostly in the afternoons when daily training took place, as at these times some fans and administrators were present. I also visited during special events like friendly matches or football summer schools.
- Other sports stadiums and spaces: I attended the majority of games played by Nejmeh during the time of my research, but such games were predominantly played in the absence of fans and I was only allowed in with LFA’s special
permission26. I also paid regular attention to local TV sports programs, sports pages in daily papers, Nejmeh and Lebanese sports Facebook groups and related
websites. In researching sports fandom, one might assume that matches would provide primary research spaces, yet since fans were banned from attending games between Lebanese teams, matches instead offered opportunities for connecting with the privileged few administrators allowed to attend and for meeting media personnel. The same stadiums and spaces also figured as vibrant research sites
26 Although the matches were being broadcast live, local sports matches were not publicly screened in sports bars and cafes, unlike for example European and world championship and I have not been told of any form of collective viewing of the matches while doing fieldwork.
when they hosted events like political rallies or the surrounding community’s daily exercise routine.
In parallel to the research methods mentioned above, and for the duration of my fieldwork, I undertook part time work as a freelance consultant in the fields of human rights,
development and peace-building. This work gave me access to information my football-based research alone would have not provided. In this role I conducted interviews and focus groups with members of Hariri owned institutions, Islamic charities and
fundamentalist groups and arranged site visits to Sunni communities across the country.
These activities allowed me to better situate what I observed at Nejmeh club in Beirut within the country-wide changes that Lebanon was witnessing.
Interviews
I conducted over forty semi-structured interviews with past and present fans, members and administrators of the club, sports journalists and political analysts. These can roughly be divided into the following categories:
- Members and fans who had left the club before I started my research. These
included, for example, Omar Ghandour, club president for 33 years from 1969 until 2003, Zuheir Baroudi, the Club’s Secretary General until 2003, and Ahmad Fleifel, a board member until 2005. I also interviewed members of the Fans’ Office, some of whom were also members of the General Assembly, who had distanced
themselves from the club in the past decade for various reasons, often related to the change in the club’s management in 2003. These interviews were always conducted in a place that the research participant chose, often their own work space. Although this allowed me access to that person’s social and professional realm it did not give me the opportunity to observe how these interviewees situated themselves within the Nejmeh community. Interviews were usually recorded with the consent of interviewees. In a few cases I was allowed to take notes, but not to record, or was asked to turn off the recorder, or to agree that certain issues were not to be shared in my published material. In most cases the interviews were the only opportunity I had to meet with those individuals as research participants. I was not able to make any subsequent contact with those who had left the club or were not active in the sports scene. In most of these cases, the interviews were only conducted during the later stages of my fieldwork, by which time I had some knowledge, based on other fieldwork activities, about who to interview and what kind of questions to ask.
Delaying the interviews proved useful in terms of the questions I could raise, but it also meant that I had little time or chance to arrange further meetings if needed.
- Interviews with current members, fans and administrators: these interviews
paralleled other data collection activities and were often an opportunity for the club administrators and members I met to give their ‘official’ version or understanding of how the club worked. Their accounts were rendered ‘official’ by the very fact that these were recorded conversations and not informal ones. These included several interviews, for example, with club administrator Ahmad Kobrosly, who recounted to me the history of the club as well as his own personal, professional and political trajectory. They also included one-off interviews with club officials, including the club’s President at the time of my research, its General Secretary, and the coordinator of the Fans’ Office. These one-off interviews were necessary first steps; in them I clarified my intentions and research plans, explained what I had done so far, and outlined what my writing and publishing plans were. This was very important in helping me tie loose ends and gave club officials assurance that their version of the story was heard.
- Sports journalists, fans and administrators of other clubs, and Ministry of Youth and Sports officials: Interviews with sports journalists were mostly conducted early on in my research, and were often used to develop my then very sketchy
understanding of the sports scene in Lebanon, the main players, and the key critical events in Lebanon’s sports history. These interviews were also conducted in
interviewees’ offices. I often ran into the same journalists in sports stadiums and matches, where they introduced me to other reporters and gave me pointers on what was happening in the matches - both on the field and off it.
- Political activists and analysts: I conducted a small number of interviews with journalists or members of the Future Movement, so as to understand their perspective on the political context, particularly the conflicts in the leadership and operation of the Hariri establishment. These interviews also gave important insights into the history of Rafic Hariri’s ascent to power.