Football Hooligans

This is an examination of football hooliganism from an anthropological perspective which seeks to overturn many ingrained assumptions about the phenomenon. The book is based on ten years of detailed study of a group of Sheffield United followers, and examines how groups of young males come to be defined and identified as football "hooligans". It challenges the view that violence is wholly central to the match-day experience, and argues that 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 hebaviour and consumption that accompany it.