“Ma, There’s a Helicopter on the Pitch!” Sport, Leisure, and the State in Northern Ireland

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The political crisis in Northern Ireland has been met with a wide range of responses from the British state. Apart from a manifest increase in its coercive powers, in an attempt to maintain hegemonic supremacy there have been state sponsored initiatives directed toward penetrating and influencing various aspects of the Province’s popular culture. Because of the close relationship between sport, leisure, and the separate cultural traditions that underpin the political conflict, this area of popular culture has proven to be highly contested terrain. While traditional Marxist approaches to the study of superstructural formations have been greatly enhanced by the application of categories drawn from Gramsci’s political analysis, the Northern Ireland case reveals that Gramsci’s distinction between political and civil society is only useful so long as its application is flexible enough to accommodate the widest possible range of social divisions.