Ethnography of English Football Fans

Geoff Pearson is Lecturer in Law at the University of Liverpool’s Management School

"...Pearson has provided us with a much needed fresh perspective on football fan research. It should become a leading text in the field. There are three excellent participation observation studies presented here, all conducted by the author, from a period of fifteen years of fieldwork.""The book is outstanding.""It is a subtle, engaging account of the interaction of fans who sometimes become involved in what the media call 'football hooliganism'...""... we should be eternally grateful that Geoff Pearson did the hard yards and embedded himself within these fan groups for so long and produced such an accessible, thoughtful and innovative book."Geoff Pearson's recently published 'Cans, Cops and Carnivals' is an academic study that deserves to become the definitive work on modern English football fan culture. In-depth 'participant observation' over a sixteen year period, the book challenges so-called common-sense notions of hooliganism and the crowd control responses in an effective and thought-provoking way.Pearson has invested sixteen years of research at various sites and from different positions in order to come up with a fascinating, readable yet also thoroughly academic - in the best sense of the word! - account of English football fans.There is more to be said about this book which is certain to become a classic within a short time. It is a hope as well that many will follow the footsteps of the author and really do immerse themselves and produce such thick and illuminating ethnographic accounts. For the time being, sport sociologists, ethnographers, social scientists with an interest in either football or the issue of fandom, but also football fans, local authorities and even policy makers are recommended to go and get this excellent book.An ethnography of English football fans is an extremely thorough ethnography of football fans, describing their motivations and behaviour. It will be of great importance to anyone interested in the behaviour of football fans and in management of football crowds.

• Acknowledgements1. Introduction 2. Ethnography: theory, method and practice 3. The football carnival 4. Identity and expression 5. Fans or hooligans? 6. Authority and social control 7. Alcohol and the effectiveness of alcohol controls 8. Attitudes to gender, sexuality, race and disability 9. The impact of technology 10. Conclusions References