Football Hooliganism: Sociological Understanding of Cross-national Differences and Similarities

Abstract

Society always pays particular attention to football-related antisocial behavior. There are unprompted incidents of football spectator violence and the behavior of socially organized groups. Football hooliganism as a social phenomenon actualized in the second half of the 20th century. Contemporary sociological discourse contains some main theoretical frameworks for understanding football violence. British theories have traditional dominance in the explanation of football hooliganism, but they focused on local features and made an attempt to generalize their conclusions on all forms of football hooliganism. Despite the ongoing theoretical domination and globalization of football culture, there remain important cross-national variations in the forms and ways of football hooliganism. This article is an effort to conceptualize and explain football hooliganism as a homogeneous phenomenon interpreted by the concept of football-related practices and their styles.