Hooliganism

Background and Definitions

The modern form of association football (or soccer) was developed in Britain. The sport evolved from existing folk games and progressed as a codified and competitive sport in England during the 19th century. Football was subsequently diffused to the wider society in Britain, and the infrastructure and culture of competitive club football conceived in England was a model imitated by other nations in Europe and beyond. Due largely to changes in the conditions and structure of the working week and the advancement of transport networks, together with the increasing interest in the sport, a network of league clubs developed in many countries. The experience of regularly staged inter- and intracity matches also informed many of the underlying principles of football fandom.

The development of club and competition structures provided opportunities for spectators to collectively (re)affirm their commitments to beliefs, values, and norms that underpinned their cultural identity. Related identifications often shaped and reinforced civic and national rivalries and established grievances emanating from sources beyond the playing field. Club fandom experienced an initially rapid growth rate; however, until the 1960s peripheral match attendance was primarily confined to relatively localized support. An increase in media coverage of successful clubs altered the dynamics of fandom, with attachments to successful nonlocal clubs becoming more prominent during this period. Clubs increasingly provided supporters not simply with an element of personal identity but a complex and living representation of the supporter's public identity.

Subsequent developments in employment and sociocultural conditions altered various elements of fandom. The strength of connections to specific teams grew as fans became more participatory. Eventually, this contribution would adopt forms such as songs, symbols, and actions that both reflect and inform the cultural makeup of fan identity and behavior. Cultural identities came to be established through rivalries and opposition, with most rivalries deriving from prejudice, myth, and conflicts. Modern football identities are informed by a communal commitment to certain norms and a shared understanding of those that are considered to [Page 347]conflict with those norms. Rivalries between clubs whose supporters primarily identify with conflicting characteristics (related to religion, locality, ethnicity, and other constructs) maintain a greater potential for violent fan conduct, although hooliganism is a potential problem within many football crowds.

As the significance of football clubs increased in postwar Britain, home support became more vocally, innovatively, and symbolically expressive, while spectators began traveling to watch matches in other places in increasing numbers, often in moblike groups. This, together with the policing, segregation, and psychosocial experience of fans and their attachment to and disdain for given football and cultural identities were among the factors that contributed to football disorder. Although forms of disorder such as pitch invasions and vandalism had been apparent, the expanse of the phenomenon, which became known as football hooliganism, was typically dependant on the relational dynamics between two or more sets of supporters. Some suggest that football hooliganism has been over-researched, although there has been considerable disagreement from the various academic viewpoints about its seriousness, causes, and solutions and even how it should be defined.

...