La selección nacional de fútbol como significante de la Nación: estudio comparativo entre Argentina y Ecuador, (2002-2006)

Abstract

This research is structured around five key words: national identity, crisis, football, Argentina and Ecuador. Five words that in the order exposed constitute the backbone of this work: the study of national identity through football in times of crisis in Argentina and Ecuador. The period analyzed includes the first years of the twenty-first century. In that moment takes place one of the effects of the globalized capitalism developed during the last decades of the twentieth century in Latin America: the decline of national identity channeled through traditional representation institutions of the nation-state. This phenomenon, here called crisis of representation, derives from the social and economic crisis resulting from the so-called “lost decade”: the eighties; as well as from the answer given to them during the nineties through the policies of the Washington Consensus. But, above all, it is closely related to who is blamed for the crisis: the political class chosen through the mechanisms of representative democracy. In this sense, the crisis of representation occurred in Argentina and Ecuador at the beginning of the new century produced not only devastating social and economic consequences, but also a demand of “feeling proud to be national again”. This crisis affected not only GDP and child poverty rates, but also a more abstract but fundamental item for the construction of a harmonious social link: identification. This research analyses a context in which the representation of individuals conforming the national community through the institutions of representative democracy is broken or seriously damaged. The breakdown of this bond, in terms of its significant function, would indicate that the hyphen linking nation and state and transforming it into a signifier would not exist or would be harmed. In visual terms, there would be a collapse or structural damage in the bridge linking the nation with its representation instances. This way, it would stop acting as a signifier and, therefore, it would not have the capacity of articulating any chain, that is to say, generating a meaning...