Abstract

Universo do Futebol, anthropological studies collection, debuted within relational figurations in which plastic arts, artistic performances, academic research, political and sporting conjuncture found resonances in a renewed ethnographic agenda in Brazilian anthropology from the 1980s onwards. Let us say that these elements fed back into the unplanned emergence of a new subfield of sports studies in the social sciences in Brazil and Latin America. The purpose of this article is to recover part of the context of the emergence of this work, minimizing the burden of characterizing it only as a bibliographical landmark, repositioning it in a set of elements to which it belonged: an art exposition with the same name themed the 1982 World Cup and its catalogue. Recovering these artifacts in context is also to highlight their greatest enthusiast and promoter, Roberto DaMatta, organizer not only of the mentioned collection, but also an enthusiastic collaborator of the art exposition, of its catalogue and disseminator of the ideas present in the collection to a wider public. If such a centrifugal movement seems to subsume the primary meaning of the collection of studies, since only perceived from an academic context, the intention will be to revive its persuasive capacity long since conventionalized as a bibliographical reference.

Keywords:
Soccer; Art; Urban Anthropology; Universe of Soccer Exposition; Emotions