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This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future.

What is the purpose of history today, and how can sporting research help us understand the world around us? In this stimulating book, Nicholas Piercey constructs four new histories of early Dutch football, exploring urban change, club members, the media, and the diaries of Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst, a stadium director, to propose practical examples of how history can become an important democratic tool for the 21st century.Using early Dutch football as a field for experimental thinking about the past, the four histories offer new insights into the lives, interests and passions of those connected to the sport in the 1910s and the cities they lived in. How did the First World War impact on Dutch football? Were new stadia a form of social control? Is the spread of the beautiful game really a good thing? And why was one of the sport's most prominent figures more concerned with potatoes? These stories of early Dutch football suggest how vital sport and history can be in shaping our lives, perceptions and actions, and why we need to challenge the influence they have today.This book also includes a downloadable appendix. Download it here(.xlsx).Praise for Four Histories about Early Dutch Football, 1910-1920'Academic historians of sport will relate to many of the problems Piercey has faced when putting together his histories, and the book is accordingly useful for thinking about what alternative futures of the study and writing of history might be. It also effectively uses sport to provide snapshots of urban Dutch society at a crucial juncture of 20th-century history.'- Reviews in History'... this book by Piercey is a useful contribution to sports history research in the Netherlands. He is the first historian to look at an original professional approach to football in the 1910-1920, demonstrating that good research is possible with archives from the sports world. The material can also inform other professional historians and non-sports enthusiasts. '- BMGN/ Low Countries Historical Review (translated from Dutch) '...an enjoyable read because of the new perspectives on Dutch football history it offers, but even more so for showing how self-reflection, if done right, leads to histories that are innovative, challenging and empathic.'Journal of Sport History'a valuable contribution to more traditional approaches to sports history, as it emphasizes the constructed character of history writing and the defining position of the historian as a historical actor. By using Foucauldian theories, Piercey provides useful insights into the way football-and sport-was connected to wider social and educational initiatives'International Journal of the History of Sport'Piercey's work is a brave attempt to write four different histories about early Dutch football in four completely different postmodern ways. He amasses a large amount of relevant data and shows command over the postmodern approach to history-writing throughout this book. In particular, his examination of discourses in writing sports history, his nuanced stance vis-a-vis historical findings and conclusions, and his experiment with using semi-fictional narratives to conduct historic (football) research are admirable'Soccer & Society

'Life outside the mobile phone is unbearable.' Lily, 19, factory workerDescribed as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise 'homeless'.Wang's fascinating study explores the full range of preconceptions commonly held about Chinese people - their relationship with education, with family, with politics, with 'home' - and argues why, for this vast population, it is time to reassess what we think we know about contemporary China and the evolving role of social media.Praise for Social Media in Industrial China'This is a wonderful book thatopens a window on the life world of millions of migrant workers in China. It addresses one of the most important topics in contemporary communication and media studies, i.e. the impact of social media on the way people manage their social interactions with family members and peers.'- Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Artand Belief'The two freely accessible books [Social Media in Industrial China and Social Media in Rural China] are conceived as introductions for the public atlarge, theoretical references being deliberately kept limited and relegated to the last parts. They offer the generalist reader very vivid and contextualised descriptions of social media usages in two very different milieus in China, but perhaps leave the more specialist readers craving more in terms of theoretical discussions and overviews of existing literature. They nevertheless represent an invitation to read the works of synthesis stemming from this collective research project, which ought to meet the demand for more theoretical generalisations'China Perspectives