Author of a PhD thesis, at the University of São Paulo, on the election of João Havelange as FIFA president, in 1974, Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui knows this institution well. In this article, he traces a brief history of the transformations the institution has seen throughout its history.

In the Museu da Cidade in Lisbon, there is a meticulous model of Lisbon prior to the 1755 earthquake, made by Ticiano Violante under the guidance of Gustavo de Matos Sequeira, a specialist in Lisbon’s history. The power of this reconstruction of a mythical past is outweighed only by the force that cast us into the chasm of the irretrievable. It epitomises the ambivalence inherent to many representations of cities: on the one hand, a salvaging of historical facts designed to reconstitute a particular point among the different sedimentations of the urban space, thus facilitating future investigations; on the other hand, the dark presence of destructive forces.

Two centuries after his birth, Gustave Flaubert is still questioning both literature and his readers. It is as if the passage of time has made sense of these questions, bringing them up to date and making them more incisive. In her analysis of a central episode in the novel Madame Bovary, Ana Rocha projects what she reads onto a screen and, in the end, the image that we see is that of Flaubert.

There are countless discourses today about food and everything that revolves around it. A quintessential anthropological object enshrined in the expression ‘we are what we eat’, food has become a matter of great cultural and social importance that is studied at the highest level and given prominence in the media and publishing industry.

We are what we eat. This premise, which establishes a relationship of equivalence between identity and food, is the essential starting point for Christopher Kissane’s historical, cultural and anthropological research. Kissane, author of Food, Religion & Communities in Early Modern Europe, was named as a ‘New Generation Thinker’ by the BBC in 2016. In this article, he examines the history of food in Europe and how it intertwines with its political history.

Football stirs up such passion in so many people that some have called the phenomenon ‘football fever’. This sport, which has taken over from all others and conquered the world, deserves to be regarded from an analytical and critical point of view, without any empty, unnecessary ‘fevers’. Football today is a very powerful, complex ‘system’ that goes far beyond stadiums and championships and has invaded our everyday lives, even if we are not actually fans. Football is so expansive and plays such an important role in daily routine that it has far overflowed stadiums. It attracts political power and has an extreme, exaggerated crystallising effect on manifestations of economic and media power. It is a world of heroes and cults that are mostly ephemeral and subject to money circulation laws. Glory generally runs fast here and stops for no-one. The anthropological significance of football as a show, a competition and a ritual is a challenge that requires intricate analysis.

Football has become a social reality of our time. You may never have set foot in a stadium or kept up to date with match results or league rankings. You may know the names of only a few players – those that you cannot ignore – and you may be underwhelmed by the spectacular brilliance of their universal presence. Even so, you cannot imagine a public space without football, because it is everywhere, all the time. There are even those who regard it as an infection that spreads throughout the body of society or believe it to be a new, equally alienating ‘opium of the people’.

Marc Perelman, professor at Paris-Nanterre University, is the author of an extensive bibliography about what he describes as a ‘barbaric sport’ and the way it extends beyond the stadiums. Le football, une peste émotionnelle (2006), written with the sociologist Jean-Marie Brohm, is one of his most famous books. In this article, he analyses and criticises football as an organised institution, as well as the benevolent blindness of intellectuals regarding this sport.

Young ideals were one of the driving forces behind the social, cultural and political history of the 20th century. These days, there is no longer a place for the ideals that were once a young people’s prerogative. What has triumphed today is youth as an ideal and aspiration, i.e. young style and its culture. This desire, which has ceased to belong to an age-group, and the difficulties of access to full adulthood have rendered the borders between generational categories more fluid and opened up an injustice between generations. Many of the privileges that adults enjoyed no longer exist for the younger generation. The very large share that the idea of youth holds in the social and aesthetic market does not correspond to young people’s actual situation. In some ways, they are a robbed generation and, on the other, only they are fit to keep up with the times, which have been accelerating at breakneck speed. This dossier covers these issues.

The long-awaited publication of the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality adds a new issue to those already existing: the theological debates on sex in the first centuries of Christianity. Art historian and literary critic João Oliveira Duarte highlights the importance that Foucault lent to the idea of desire and the object of desire in Christian questions about sexuality.