Fan club world politics: Reinterpreting international relations beyond the state

Abstract Rather than considering popular culture in the service of states, this article directs attention instead to the social level and how fan clubs pursue their own non-state international relations. Through a comparative study of Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Clubs and the BTS ARMY, the article offers a tripartite framework for analysis of the previously neglected international relations of fan clubs, unpacking their distinctive transnational practices, identities, and activism. The discussion considers how fan clubs have developed their own parallels to interstate politics in their transnational practices, and advanced alternative identities rejecting state-centric territorial demarcations. In contrast to accounts of the reproduction in popular culture of elite narratives, the article highlights how fan clubs may serve to reframe and reorient from below representations of even the most exclusive aspects of interstate relations including their instruments of violence. With reference to the common case study of the Black Lives Matter movement, the article also unpacks distinctive dynamics of transnational activism among fan clubs, elaborating how techniques originally mobilized in relation to the fandom object have been transferred to address global political issues. The limitations to each of these aspects are subsequently considered in view of fan clubs’ embedding in contemporary capitalist and geopolitical relations.