Today, Ronit Anand (Haberdashers’ Aske Boys School) talks about his recently completed debut fieldwork on hooliganism at football (or ‘soccer’ in the US) games.

Hooligan culture among British football clubs like the Tottenham Hotspurs incoroprates a lot of violence, hypermasculine-coded behaviors and competition with rival firms. How did ethnography help Ronit understand the group cohesion and fusion that frame hooligan identity and behavior? Can we use these anthropological insights to help reduce extreme behavior? What are the parallels between violent behaviors in Britain and in other cultural contexts like in Brazil? Does this research inform us about how other extreme groups (e.g., jihadis) become motivated to commit violence?

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Show notes

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