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Es ist wohl kein Zufall, dass ich mich daran noch gut erinnere: Am 21. Juni 2000 versammelten sich am Flughafen in Wien-Schwechat vor dem Gate A 17 fur den Flug BA 8403 nach Birmingham fast ausschlieslich jungere und junge enthusiastische Wissenschaftler*innen, die zur dritten Crossroads in Cultural Studies-Konferenz flogen. Das 1998 lancierte ministerielle Forschungsprogramm Cultural Studies/Kulturwissenschaften hatte die Aufbruchsstimmung noch weiter befordert und so flog ein etwa zwanzigkopfiges osterreichischen Team nach England, zum Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) der University of Birmingham, das 1964 von Richard Hoggart gegrundet worden war und in dem Stuart Hall seit 1968 – und bis zur Schliesung 2002 – Direktor war. Voller Ideen, aber auch voller Erwartungen wollten wir in das Zentrum der Cultural Studies, die nichts weniger als die wissenschaftliche Einlosung unserer 68er- oder Post-68er-Erwartungen versprachen: Eine engagierte, linke, interventionistische, transdisziplinare und parteinehmende Forschung zu aktuellen Entwicklungen und mit dem Fokus auf Popularkulturen schien moglich.

Blicken wir kurz in die letzten Jahre des vorigen Jahrtausends zuruck: Das Projekt der Cultural Studies war im britischen Raum langst etabliert, wenn auch am Rande der wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen. Und es war mit einzelnen Bastionen auch schon in den USA und in einigen Stadten Europas (so auch in Wien) prasent.

In Austria sports history is situated between history (which is not interested in sports) and physical education (which is no longer interested in history). Although sports history enjoyed a long tradition at Vienna University, academic research in the field trickled to a halt in the 1980s. From the beginning of the 1990s, however, a new sports history emerged in the work of academic freelancers who came from different research disciplines. On the basis of this interdisciplinary approach they established a wide-ranging field of research based primarily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and the British model of cultural studies. Initially, their work dealt with the obvious topic of soccer, but over the last decade, the focus has broadened to embrace questions of nationalism, migration, masculinity and gender, body politics, and space as well as other forms of sport and the nature of sporting cultures in general.

An event like EURO 2008 does not merely consist of the final round, its participants, the stadiums and the public viewing areas; it does not only consist of lucky fans who could get hold of a ticket, not‐so‐lucky fans who must content themselves with large screen displays, and apparent or actual hooligans. Away from the big stages, there are people and groups who are not allowed to be in attendance and there are teams or ‘local heroes’ for whom qualification or even every point scored in the qualification is already a sensation. In this article, I present examples of how an event like EURO 2008 also constructs identities, provides structures and defines inclusions and exclusions beyond the aforementioned powerful discourses and demonstrate that it is not a matter of consequences of one‐sided normative power, but of hegemonic processes of negotiation in which open or subtle acts of resistances materialize. I exemplify this with the case of the small football country Malta.

Much has been written about the 'production' of sexuality in Nazi Germany; the specific ways of constructing male heroes and frail (but also strong) women coming together in a cold and distant way in the service of eugenics and a new society. Thus it was a national and political concept of sexuality in the narrow sense whereby sexuality was inextricably linked with the benefit of 'Volk, Reich und Vaterland'. But an analysis of private photographs and the 'unpolitical' sections of the newspapers of the period reveals elements of love and eroticism which indicate that, even in the Nazi context, the notion of an essential sexuality can be questioned. This article, on the one hand, discusses sexuality in the Nazi era from official and private photographs and, on the other hand, makes observations about the actuality of the Nazi concept even in (post)modern societies. The aim of the article is to look at a specific aspect of normality to obtain a more precise understanding of the Nazi era. In retrospect, confrontation with the National Socialist era takes shape in images of an erratic bloc: National Socialist ideology and its brutal execution do not seem to allow withdrawal. In the case of resistance, it is only imaginable as a political action with all of its consequences and not as a tolerated freedom or resistant reading. This is based on a view of the National Socialist era constructed by capitalist as well as real socialist society. National Socialism is not merely portrayed in its inhumanity, but stylized as pure 'evil' for use as a negative example in contrast to one's own code of honour. This is particularly true of the terrain of sexuality and seduction, love and eroticism. It would appear that the political ideals were formulated too obviously, the production of approved sexuality and reproduction dictatorially staged too clearly (Bleuel, 1972; Czarnowski, 1991) to allow any divergences from the