{"id":3005,"date":"2010-09-06T06:52:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T10:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3005"},"modified":"2010-09-06T12:36:54","modified_gmt":"2010-09-06T16:36:54","slug":"on-englishness-protectionism-and-entitlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/on-englishness-protectionism-and-entitlement\/","title":{"rendered":"On Englishness, Protectionism and Entitlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday night, I stopped into a pub to watch the evening\u2019s football match as the England national team embarked on their quest to put their World Cup misery behind them and qualify for the European Championships in 2012.<\/p>\n

As England took the field, faces around the pub were not filled with joy, but with scepticism.\u00a0 There were not cheers of \u201cCome on England,\u201d but groans that perfectly relayed to me as a foreigner how the footballing nation had been feeling all summer since its agonizing 4-1 exit at the hands of Germans two months earlier.\u00a0 In the team\u2019s first competitive match since the world cup, the squad knew they had to perform.\u00a0 The day\u2019s headlines in the sports section highlighted the importance of getting the team a strong win; for, although England faced easy opposition in the qualification round, the patience of their fans was drawing thin.<\/p>\n

In the Three Lions\u2019 previous game, a friendly against Hungary, fans booed.\u00a0 Similarly, this summer in South Africa, after drawing 0-0 against a meagre Algeria side, fans booed.\u00a0 And, as was made blatantly obvious by the regulars at The Rising Sun, at kick off, they were not pleased with their Three Lions.\u00a0 What is even more peculiar than the fan\u2019s dissent is the England players\u2019 tolerance for them.\u00a0 After England\u2019s dismal exit from World Cup in June and even preceding the team\u2019s friendly against\u00a0 Hungary players consistently came forth to defend their fans\u2019 right to boo.<\/p>\n

After noticing this odd characteristic of criticism toward the national side, I asked the two stalwart England fans I had been chatting with throughout the match as to why fans felt entitled to judge and criticise England\u2019s form and results.\u00a0 The two blokes, Rory and Paul, both asserted their right to be critical, but noted a few crucial limitations.\u00a0 Paul said, \u201cI am English, and England has always been my home.\u00a0 When football is this important, as it is in England and the rest of the world, they represent all of us, our country and the way we live.\u00a0 You never boo England before any competitive match, only friendlys, but you can boo after any pathetic result, such as the 4-1 loss to Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is this element of entitlement and right of opinion present in English football that I have noticed many other places in English culture.\u00a0 In the Museum of London, an exhibit catered to this same form of entitlement of opinion, asking Londoners pertinent questions on how London should be managed, raging widely from what type of construction should constitute London to how many trees should be planted.\u00a0 Unlikely as it was that the exhibit influenced any official opinion, yet there was far from a scarcity of opinions, again underscoring the general right of the English to voice their concerns and protect and preserve Englishness.<\/p>\n

This entitlement of opinion, I feel, is linked with the same protectionist sentiments of \u201cEnglish National Identity\u201d that we have encountered frequently in our readings.\u00a0 The right to be critical, the right of opinion and the right to preserve are all intensely imbedded into Englishness.\u00a0 Whether it be the fear of England\u2019s national team letting down the nation, or the nation changing into something disastrously un-English, the English feel entitled to voice their opinions and protect against these changes.<\/p>\n

These ideas are unequivocally absent in America.\u00a0 We seem to define and pride ourselves as being a \u201cmelting pot\u201d and that our national identity is a lack of one specific set of ideals or social norms.\u00a0 We feel that being a diverse nation of all races and backgrounds is in fact who we are, whereas the English staunchly believe in specificity of Englishness.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to study during my year how these notions of entitlement and protectionism influence, uphold and define Englishness, what it means to be English and the right and privileges pertaining thereunto.\u00a0\u00a0 During this year, I want to discover what compiles Englishness and how this protectionism functions within its society.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday night, I stopped into a pub to watch the evening\u2019s football match as the England national team embarked on their quest to put their World Cup misery behind them and qualify for the European Championships in 2012. As England took the field, faces around the pub were not filled with joy, but with scepticism.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6696,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-luke","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}