A study about footballviolence in Sweden : How can we understand the usage of violence in supporterculture?

Football is the biggest sport in Sweden with the most spectators and the biggest amount of generated money. Sweden though has the longest and most violent history of footballviolence compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, however not many studies exist about this topic in Sweden. This study focuses on the regular footballsupporters who use violence connected to football. The six persons in this study are not hooligans, they do not seek violence as a footballhooligan, still they admit that they have used violence in connection to footballseveral times. The purpose of this study is to get a broader understanding for the culture of violence within the Swedish footballsupporters. How come that individuals step inside a violent culture and what can we learn from their own stories in how they got in to participating violence and sustaining it. The study has together with three theoretical frameworks and previous studies explained how the culture of violence exist in Swedish supporterculture. It also gives an broader explanation to what it does to the individuals existing in the culture. The three theoretical framworks are Bourdieu’s habitus, Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Elias’s the established and the outsiders toghether with previous studies focusing on subculture, policing in football and hooliganism in popular culture. The study consist of interviews with six swedish male footballsupporters in the ages between 23 and 28 years old. With their stories about their own experiences four themes were found in analysis, culture of violence, culture of loyalty, us vs. Them and subculture. The results in the study shows that the supporterculture works as a subculture, with its own norms, behavior and expectations on the individuals existing in the culture