Du supporteur au consommateur: acculturation, déculturation et violence rituelle chez les spectateurs du football britannique

Abstract

Since it hit the headlines some twenty years ago, football hooliganism has been investigated by various official commissions, police research groups, journalists and social scientists. It has been interpreted in terms of youth culture versus class culture, tribal culture vs. mass culture, proletarianism vs. embourgeoisement, and blamed on, among others, education, alcohool, unemployment, European, football, the police, the media, the National Front. Among this number of interpretation, I have distinguished four major approaches : anthropological, psychological, sociological and historical. It has been my aim to try and assess their relevance, and to account for the «britishness » of football hooliganism.