Soccer fandom as catechism: Practices of the sacred among young men in Argentina

The presence of the sacred in everyday life is broadly viewed as a trend that unifies working class cultures in Latin America; it is visible in rituals, feasts, devotions and miracles, as well as in daily activities. One’s relations with the sacred are part of daily life, developed in and through “secular” practices. The fact that elements from the secular world-in this case, soccer and fandom-are included within the sacred denotes a specific way of being-in-the-world, a different logic by which heaven, earth, nature and human beings are intimately connected (Duarte 1986; Parker 1996; Semán 2001). The sacred is recognized, but not as something distant or “radically other”, as in Durkheimian definitions of religion but as textures of the sacred (Martín 2009). Religious practices, in this sense, are one of many possible practices of the sacred.