Blackwell Reference Online

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Combine masculinity, physicality, fantasy, and local pride, mix in sporting excitement and collective grievances, and the possible outcome, dating back to the formation of Association Football in the mid-nineteenth century, has been disorder. Since the mid-1960s, incidents in Britain involving football spectator disorder and violence have been labeled “hooliganism.” Lacking a precise definition or a legal status, “football hooliganism” has for some 40 years served as a receptacle for a spectrum of prejudices and attributes. Without a precise meaning, hooliganism can have no precise causes. The research process thus needs to examine both the concept (and its manifestation) and the interaction between definer and defined ( Pearson 1983 ). Negotiations around the criminal justice system are crucial because definitions of deviance can depend on the demands of bureaucracies and the moral entrepreneurship of police, media, and the football authorities. The resulting boundary maintenance mechanisms result in stigmatizations and degradation ceremonies offered by courtrooms and media “name and shame” projects. The establishment of police databases, increasingly via the eye of a lens, provides the ever-expanding roll call of “categorical suspicion” crucial to the construction and maintenance of a “social problem” ( Armstrong & Giulianotti 1998 ). Termed since the 1970s the “English ... log in or subscribe to read full text