Fowl' play

Reverse place-branding of Toxteth, liverpool through the celebrity discourse of Robbie Fowler

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3978000
AutoresAlice Butler‐warke (0000-0002-7205-9832, Robert Gordon University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen24
Número9
Páginas1538-1556
Fecha de publicación2023-10-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2022.2073466
OpenAlexW4229458788
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas47

This paper interrogates the concept of place-branding and celebrity. It uses Liverpool Football Club striker Robbie Fowler and his roots in Toxteth as a way to contest the unidirectional relationship between celebrity and place. Where 'traditional' place-branding sees a celebrity's positive symbolic capital transferred to place, this paper shows how the direction of transfer may be reversed with the symbolic capital of a place flowing towards the celebrity. It takes the stigmatized area of Toxteth and shows what happens when the negative symbolic capital of place is entered into the discourse of celebrity. In the case of Fowler, this paper highlights how a territorially stigmatised Toxteth is used as both a symbolic millstone that drags him down and an illustration of his achievements 'against the odds'. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis and drawing on a Chomskyian framing of the political economy of the media, this paper suggests that the linking of Fowler and Toxteth is illustrative of a broader neoliberal ideology that sees symbolic violence as the means of ensuring a distinct social stratification

Club · CONTEST · Critical discourse analysis · Framing (construction · Ideology · Media studies · Place Branding · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Symbolic capital · Symbolic power · The Symbolic · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Sports, Gender, and Society