Football Hooligans

Author:

By Gary Armstrong

Format:

Paperback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£17.99

Tagged with:

Football, Football Violence, Sheffield United FC

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Further Details

• Published: 31st Jan 1998
• ISBN: 1859739571
• Pages: 320

From the Publisher:

This book examines how groups of young male fans come to be defined and identified as football hooligans and challenges the assumption that violence is wholly central to the match-day experience for these supporters. Rather, the creation of identity is at the root of hooliganism, with all the cultural values and rituals, codes of honour and shame, and communal patterns of behaviour and consumption that accompany it. The author locates hooliganism historically within the milieu of an industrial working class culture and examines ideas of performance and ritual encompassed in idealized masculinity. The book is based on a decades in-depth study of the Blades, a group of football fans supporting Sheffield United, who are notorious for their hooliganism. It contributes to the debate on football hooliganism by challenging many traditionally-held notions of hooliganism and by providing the first anthropological study of football violence. The book also debunks the myth that violence between football fans is organized by generals operating within hierarchically structured groups. Falsehoods such as this, it is argued, are advanced to augment the powers of the police and media in redefining and controlling particular groups of individuals whose behaviour does not fit easily within increasingly constrictive codes of social conduct. This book represents essential reading not only for undergraduates of social anthropology, sociology and criminology but also for the general reader with an interest in football culture.

From the Critics:

“What lifts [Football Hooligans] out of the ordinary is Armstrong's writing style which... is lucid, unsensational, and mercifully free of that combination of glee and fevered self-justification which is a traditional feature when such accounts are penned by the (now reformed) participants”

Harry Pearson, When Saturday Comes

“There's a great book out now called Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score by Gary Armstrong. I tend to run a mile from academics who write on that subject, but this one was recommended to me by an authority and it's head and shoulders above the rest. It's refreshingly free from the middle-class moralising and patronising attitude towards the hoolies that permeates most of those studies. Most of all, it has no social control agenda and it deconstructs a lot of the bullshit about football firms which has developed as theory. I recommend it strongly”

Irving Welsh

“A fascinating read...Armstrong is fascinating on the games-playing and ritualistic nature of hooligan confrontations.. Hooligans used to like a bit of attention, a record of their brave deeds. In Armstrong, one crew, at least, found their very own anthropologist, the Boswell of the Blades.”

Chris Maume, The Independent