My first book review accepted for publication, but the second to hit the presses, takes a look at Peter Alegi’s Laduma!: Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa (2010). My review was published in the University of Florida-produced journal, the African Studies Quarterly. This was the second edition of Alegi’s well received book first published in 2004, and updated for this past year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

I had been very interested in the book having just returned from the World Cup in South Africa, but found it to be much more of a historical text about the origins of football in the colonial period and how it progressed up to the 1970s, rather than an analytical text about what soccer has contributed to society. Many of the connections were there, but obviously that part of the text is limited by Alegi’s training as a historian and not a sociologist, or political scientist. However, anyone doing that kind of study would definitely need to use Alegi’s work because, as shown through in the text, his use of original text is one of the highlights of a very interesting book.

You can check out my review here, and the pdf here.

[Update]

My review has been reposted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press here and Amazon is selling my review for 10USD!