Abstract

This essay draws on the final report of a football hooligan memoir research project looking at the connection between deviant football hooligan literature and the history of British football hooligan subcultures. The research is situated at the intersection between socio-legal studies, cultural criminology, subcultural studies and sport journalism. The present essay notes the relevance of the project for the international sub-disciplines of cultural criminology and post-subcultural studies and for what it describes as possible post-subcultural study in socio-legal studies and criminology. The full research project involved a comprehensive collection and reading of myriad football hooligan fan memoirs as well as interviews with participants and the essay showcases this original interview data. The essay claims that, if used carefully, hooligan literature can lead to informed ethnographies of subcultures and a more sustained post-subcultural perspective.

Highlights

  • The ‘hit and tell’ football hooligan literature has been a surprising commercial success over a 2 number of years

  • A hardback historical account of Leeds United’s football hooligan gangs (Gall, 2007) published in December 2007 sold out by the New Year 2008 and set the internet fans’ forums and websites buzzing with gossip and rumour as one of its top boy interviewees, Eddie Kelly, was arrested by West Yorkshire police within days of the book’s release. This football hooligan literature is unashamedly partisan and often boastful, recounting up to 40 years of aggressive male football fandom associated with a particular British league club, popular music and fashion obsessions and the behaviour of its ‘mob’, ‘firm’ or ‘crew’

  • Like the media, is frequently the enemy for the hooligan authors, seen as partly responsible for the myriad misrepresentations of football fan culture and its history which these books perceive as a fundamental problem and seek to put to rights in an accurate oral history of the scene

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Summary

Introduction

The ‘hit and tell’ football hooligan literature has been a surprising commercial success over a 2 number of years.

Results
Conclusion
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