Thinking through football hooliganism

The overall aim of this work is to uncover, describe and analysethe phenomenon of soccer hooliganism both as it appears and in thewas that it presents itself to consciousness.But why "think through" football hooliganism at all? Surelyquite enough has already been said and written about this highlyPublicise, form of public disorder? Already there have beenPsychological, sociological, soci. o-psychological., historical andmedia study accounts - to say nothing of numerous articles andnewsreports in the popular media. Upon the basis of theirdistinctive ways of setting up and relating to this phenomenon,these accounts have produced various types of policy-orientatedreactions and explanations in terms of psychological immaturity,the Alienation of traditional working class fans from "their club"in an age of consumer capitalism, ritualised aggression, theexpression of a traditional male working class form of territoriallocalism and finally as the outcome of and subsequent reaction tothe "labelling" of fans and "moral panic" of the media. In allhonesty, what more is there to say? Why has not the author tackledan area of crime that has yet to be so fully documented?This study is not primarily concerned with adding to the everescalating and add academic enterprise of reviewing reviews ofreviews from pre-conceived standpoints upon standpoints about suchstandpoints etc., which themselves rarely address the possibility conditionsof that which they theorise about. A brief glance downthe booklist of this research will confirm that there is currentlyno shortage of studies which concern themselves with the rehashingof all that which has been previously written about bothphenomenology and soccer violence. What, in the face of all-this,WOULD truly be an achievement is the APPLIED phenomenologicalexplication of the phenomenon itself.Undoubtedly the purported explanations mentioned above have,{taken as a whole, responded, to the problematic presence ofsomething our culture understands as hooliganism in such a way asto explain this "something" in terms of the presence of somethingelse. Only for as long as we understand research purely in termsof this causal-explanatory manner and policy-reactive mode, canthis area be said to be unquestionably well researched. It is onthis implicit basis that there appears little justification for yetanother study of football hooliganism. But are the possibilitiesof academic research exhausted by the setting up and responding tothe established presence of phenomena "out there" in the real worldin line with the dictates of established disciplines?The title of this studs summarises a foundational Project inthat both the thinking and the object "thought through" are broughttogether. It is a major'contention of phenomenology -- the methodof our foundational research - that all the activities ofconsciousness and experience are intimately connected to anexperienced object or "phenomenon", so that all experience isexperience OF some thematic object meant and meant in a distinctivemanner. Thus prior to the questions "Why is there footballhooliganism"?, and "What should be done about it? ", is a morefundamental or "foundational" problematic: one which precedesexplanation and addresses the possibility-conditions for thecultural presence of both the phenomenon and our accepted ways of responding to our awareness of it.