By Brett Matthew Bebber

Britain enjoys a rich historical tradition of popular protest and collective action. Due to their public and publicized nature, sporting events have been recognized increasingly as venues in which broader cultural and political meanings are enacted and debated in the postwar period. This project examines how social anxieties about immigration, unemployment, and government repression were represented and contested through violence and eventually racist aggression at football matches. From 1968 to the mid-1970s, violence among fans and with police became expected on a weekly basis within and outside British football stadiums as new forms of spectator allegiance and sports consumption emerged. British football became a contested cultural and institutional site of racisms, violence, masculinities, and national mythologies. Rather than examining football per se, the principal aim of this project is to investigate how this distinct cultural milieu became a site for the British government to enact violence against working-class citizens by manipulating moral anxieties, physical environments, police tactics, and legal prosecution.

Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona, 2008. 474p.

By Steve Fosdick and Peter Marsh

This book provides a highly readable introduction to the phenomenon of football hooliganism, ideal for students taking courses around this subject as well as those having a professional interest in the subject, such as the police and those responsible for stadium safety and management. For anybody else wanting to learn more about one of society's most intractable problems, this book is the place to start. Unlike<span class='showMoreLessContentElement' style='display: none;'> other books on this subject it is not wedded to a single theoretical perspective but is concerned rather to provide a critical overview of football hooliganism, discussing the various approaches to the subject. Three fallacies provide themes which run through the book: the notion that football hooliganism is new; that it is a uniquely football problem; and that it is predominantly an English phenomenon. The book examines the history of football-related violence, the problems in defining the nature of football hooliganism, the data available on the extent of football hooliganism, provides a detailed review of the various theories about who hooligans are and why they behave as they do, and an analysis of policing and social policy in relation to tackling football hooliganism.

London; Willan, 2005. 232p.

By Patrick Murphy, John Williams and Eric Dunning,

nternational football fixtures, such as the World Cup finals in Italy in 1990, draw together not only rival teams but rival fans. The police and the media are increasingly geared up to tackle international fixtures as occasions for the outbreak of crowd disorder. It can sometimes seem that the behaviour of the fans is more important than the game itself. Football on Trial examines some of the causes of football hooliganism as a European and world phenomenon. It casts an eye forward to the 1994 World Cup in Los Angeles and asks why soccer hooliganism has not been a problem in the USA. It also examines the connections between player violence and spectator violence, and considers the role of the media in producing soccer crowd disorder. The authors have built a world class reputation as authors of Hooligans Abroad and The Roots of Football Hooliganism , a reputation that this accessible and penetrating work can only add to.

London; New York: Routledge, 1990. 255p

By Great Britain. Ministry of Housing and Local Government. Working Party on Crowd Behaviour at Football Matches; J. Lang

In May 1968 the Football authorities, at your instigation, organised a WorkingParty, under my Chairmanship, to examine the problems associated with football crowd behaviour, in the hope that it would be possible to offer advice and guid-ance to football clubs and other interested parties which might lead to someimprovement. The Working Party was dealing with a subject which has been discussed almostad nauseam during recent years. Not unexpectedly the Working Party has notfound a single simple solution for a problem which is often due to a combinationof factors, which is liable to arise on any occasion when large crowds assemble,especially if the circumstances are exciting, and which is a form of social malaisenot at all unusual in the state of relaxed discipline which is a feature of modernsociety. Probably the three most important of the findings of the Working Party are: (1) Maximum co-operation between a football club and the police. (2) Absolute acceptance of the decision of the referee by everybody. (3) The provision of seats in place of standing accommodation for spectators.

London: HMSO, 1969. 18p.

Edited by Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth

As the 1994 World Cup competition in the USA again demonstrates, football is one of the most popular participant and spectator sports around the world. The fortunes of teams can have great significance for the communities they represent at both local and national levels. Social and cultural analysts have only recently started to investigate the wide variety of customs, values and social patterns that surround the game in different societies. This volume contributes to the widening focus of research by presenting new data and explanations of football-related violence. Episodes of violence associated with football are relatively infrequent, but the occasional violent events which attract great media attention have their roots in the rituals of the matches, the loyalties and identities of players and crowds and the wider cultures and politics of the host societies. This book provides a unique cross-national examination of patterns of order and conflict surrounding football matches from this perspective with examples provided by expert contributors from Scotland, England, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina and the USA.

London; New York: Routledge, 1994. 273p.

By John White

Association football is the most popular and significant of "supporter sports". Its spectator misbehaviour is portrayed and conceived as an exclusively modern and British phenomenon and as a violent disease prevalent in the professional game, when it is none of these things. Nevertheless, it is an important socio-legal issue. The mass media have played a substantial role in fostering such misconceptions, and hold a vested interest in creating and perpetuating "football hooliganism" as a "social problem" or "moral panic". The social controllers, in their use of the criminal law and penal control, also out of vested interests, have reacted to the behaviour in an unnecessarily repressive and harmful way, while it is suggested that a more fruitful approach might have been through the development of innovations based on some model of self-help or at least through the invocation of the civil law. This conclusion is reached following investigation and analysis over several years of how football fans actually behave at match outings, of their interactions with law enforcement agents, and of the views of the participants themselves, all of which are described.

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1984. 473p.

By Earl Collison

Football has existed as a popular sport in Britain and the world for several centuries. The game has evolved from a violent rural participant sport into a global entertainment with thousands of amateur and professional teams vying for national and international honours. Since 1960 a 'new' phenomenon 'football hooliganism' has become a 'moral panic' amongst the media and the public. Crowd violence at football matches has become a major social concern. Various explanations have been presented to explain football hooliganism, but none of these explanations have been completely satisfactory. Football crowd violence is not a new phenomenon, it has existed in a evolving relationship with football since the sport's inception. The modern problem is a media created moral panic over a long established human condition namely collective crowd behaviour. Although many explanations have been offered to explain and solve football hooliganism, none has attempted a detailed investigation of football crowd violence through theories of collective behaviour. Collective behaviour offers a viable alternative explanation for the causes of football crowd violence. Using Neil Smelser's value-added theory and building block approach, football crowds are analysed to determine the factors that contribute to football hooliganism including: social stress in Scottish society including religious intolerance and class influences, the football crowd structure, the media, the police, and factors leading to violence. The results offer an explanation of the specific structure required to create violence which in turn indicates how violence can be controlled. Football is unique in that the crowd is triangular in nature since it consists of two opposing support groups and the police. Each Saturday these three groups are in confrontation with each other on the terraces while two teams play football, but only in rare instances does actual violence occur. As a result of the analysis of football crowds through the value-added theory of collective behaviour, conclusions are drawn which indicate that steps can be taken in the wider society and by the police to reduce the possibility of football crowd violence. The focusing of support group attention on the opposition support is vital to crowd violence. The police are generally able to restrict crowd violence by disrupting this focusing process. Although collective violence can never be totally controlled, the non¬ violent ritualised behaviour on the terraces can be maintained while at the same time reducing the possibility of collective crowd action. This can be achieved by altering police activities, reducing social stress in the community, and altering preconceived ideas of individual who attend matches.

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1988. 354p.

By Giovanni Carnibella, Anne Fox, Kate Fox Joe McCann, James Marsh, Peter Marsh

The report contains an up-to-date review of research and theoretical approaches to football violence in Europe. The historical development of the problems in various countries is outlined. Specific attention is given to the role of the media, the emergence of overt racism at football matches and the alleged influence of alcohol consumption on violent behaviour. The content of each section of the report is summarised below. ES.2 History The game of football has been associated with violence since its beginnings in 13th century England. Medieval football matches involved hundreds of players, and were essentially pitched battles between the young men of rival villages and towns - often used as opportunities to settle old feuds, personal arguments and land disputes. Forms of ‘folk-football’ existed in other European countries (such as the German Knappen and Florentine calcio in costume), but the roots of modern football are in these violent English rituals. The much more disciplined game introduced to continental Europe in 1900s was the reformed pastime of the British aristocracy. Other European countries adopted this form of the game, associated with Victorian values of fair-play and retrained enthusiasm. Only two periods in British history have been relatively free of football-related violence: the inter-war years and the decade following the Second World War. The behaviour now known as ‘football hooliganism’ originated in England in the early 1960s, and has been linked with the televising of matches (and of pitch-invasions, riots etc.) and with the ‘reclaiming’ of the game by the working classes. In other European countries, similar patterns of behaviour emerged about 10 years later, in the early 1970s. Some researchers argue that a similar ‘proletarianisation’ of the game was involved, but there is little consensus on this issue, and much disagreement on the extent to which continental youth were influenced by British hooligans

Oxford, UK: Social Issues Research Centre, 1996. 168p.

By Ramón Fredrik Johan Spaaij

Football hooliganism periodically generates widespread political and public anxiety. In spite of the efforts made and resources invested over the past decades, football hooliganism is still perceived by politicians, policymakers and media as a disturbing social problem. This highly readable book provides the first systematic and empirically grounded comparison of football hooliganism in different national and local contexts. Focused around the six Western European football clubs on which the author did his research, the book shows how different clubs experience and understand football hooliganism in different ways. The development and effects of anti-hooligan policies are also assessed. The emphasis throughout is on the importance of context, social interaction and collective identity for understanding football hooliganism. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in football culture, hooliganism and collective violence.

Vossiuspers UvA – Amsterdam University Press, 2006. 500p.