Speaker
Description
Aguante, football and resilience
The "aguante" is a word used by Argentines to highlight mental strength; tolerance and resistance to disgust; ability to repress or contain negative reactions; patience and conformism to withstand adversity or to control suffering in the face of loss. During the last decades this word has been closely linked to the soccer lexicon, and particularly to the language of the “barras brava”. The mass media have erroneously spread the idea that "aguante" is a male thing. It has been replicated by the “barras” themselves, politicians, managers, journalists and the general public. This somehow turned "aguante" into a justifier for violence inside soccer stadiums.
In this work we try to analyze and demonstrate that "aguante" is a resilient behavior; either a variety within the field of resilience or a new category within it. We understand that resilience must be considered as a social process by which certain social actors use strategies that are equally social, individual, but also group or collective, in a social and relational context.
We take the definition of "sport-related violence" (Kevin Young) as theoretical framework; and methodologically, we use the combination of comparative and historical research
We believe that the confirmation of this hypothesis, its use as public policy and its massive dissemination; could help reduce violence in football. That is to say, the generation of a virtuous circle that is born in academic research, becomes a public policy and helps to develop the total or partial solution of a social problem that seems to have no solution.
