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Sociology, Vol. 32, No. 2, 353-377 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038598032002007

How Conflict Escalates: The Inter-Group Dynamics of Collective Football Crowd `Violence'

Clifford Stott

Steve Reicher

In recent years, the debate on football crowd violence has concentrated on the violent dispositions of participants - and particularly on the nature and origins of conflictual norms held by `hooligan' fans. In this paper, we challenge this tendency. We argue that the `hooligan' perspective is limited in its ability to explain how conflict generalises during crowd events, the precise conditions under which it originates, and the form that it takes. In order to account for these phenomena it is necessary to broaden the scope of enquiry so as to include the police as well as fans. Using events involving England fans at the 1990 world cup (Italia 90), we propose a model in which the nature of group norms and group conflict are a consequence of the developing interactions between England supporters and the Italian Caribineri. The assumption, on the part of the police, that all fans were potentially dangerous and their treatment of fans as such led, over time, to a situation where fans who initially eschewed violence, came into conflict with the police. The example both illustrates the value of an analysis of collective football violence in terms of developmental inter-group dynamics and suggests how the assumption that fans are inherently dangerous may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Key Words: crowd conflict • football crowds • hooliganism • policing


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