‘No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care’

Researching the Subculture of England’s

Most Notorious Football Fans

Basic question:

•What does the

drone mean?

The problem and its context

• Football hooliganism as a social problem

• Millwall as the most famous hooligans

• ‘Millwall’ as a symbol & myth

• How do fans negotiate/manage their symbolic

status?

Hypothesis

• Specific: Millwall Football Club is an informal

cultural instution centered on the expression
and maintenance of a specific variety of social
identity (in context of globalisation/late
modernity)

• General: Many football clubs in England

perform this function, especially for their
working class followers

A multidisciplinary approach

• Cultural Studies

• Social Theory (the body)
• Social History (the history of the area)

• Sociolinguistics (how people communicate)

• Media Studies (the Millwall myth)

• Ethnography, Participant Observation

(+ interviews:

finding the right questions to ask – values, social history of the region, how people
communicate, the body…)

Research areas (unfolding)

• Regional culture, social identity and football

fandom in the context of globalization

• Media myths

• Forms of communication

• Embodiment & habitus

• Ritualisation

Research Questions

• Are Millwall fans really ‘the worst’? If so, why? Is such an

assertion measurable?

• How did the Millwall Myth originate? How does it work?

• Who are these people? What does their subculture look like?

Their broader regional culture?

• What are the deeper meanings of participation?

• What does the drone (aka the Lion’s Roar, the monk chant)

mean?

Class

• Beyond ‘economic’ thinking: class as a

mentality with specific forms of
communication

• Sub-political ‘oppositionality’

• Q. Pre-modern mentalities, behaviour?

SE London in history and imagination

• The first suburb of London: crime,

disreputability and entreprenurialsm

• Competitive individualism v

corporate/collective class formations (e.g.the
North)

• SEL as the land that time forgot: London’s

west/east, light/dark, order/chaos binaries

SE London & its archetypes

• Fugitives from regulation
• Elizabethan theatre

• Highwaymen
• Dockers
• Boxers
• The O ‘Houlihans or Hooligans
• Teddy Boys
• Skinheads
• Gangsters

Cultural reproduction: how does this

past get into the present?

A set of ‘dispositions’: ducking and diving (guile, autonomy,

inviolability) as well as toughness

Implicit know-how/‘common sense’

Masculinity and physical capital in the working class

neighbourhood

A sense of the world held in the body (standing, walking…)

Speech codes

(Bernstein: Class, Codes and Control)

The working class child in the middle class school

Elaborated Code: explicit, abstract, individualised

speaker roles, precise

Restricted code: implicit, concrete, communalised

speaker roles, metaphorical

A grammar of embodied communication? Implicit

and Elaborated?

Ethnography/Participant Observation

• Interviews

• Attending Games as participant

• Field notes and audio recordings (no cameras)

• Immersion in bodily culture – standing/stance, walking,

participation in the ‘ballet’ as physical capital

• The problem of ‘going native’

Globalisation and Social Change

• The significance of place

• Economic restructuring (e.g. the docks)

• White Flight & suburbanisation

• New communities in old places: in-migration

• New communities outside town: out-migration

•

• Significance of the old place: pilgrimage

Findings: The Ritualisation Process

• Anthropologically widespread techniques and processes: the

people gather around the campfire and sing

• Songs and chants as restricted code

• Ritual and singing: ‘you can’t argue with a song’

+

• Bodily immersion: gestures, movement =

• A ritual that heightens the lived experience of collective

identity

Findings

The ‘spine of history’’ cultural continuity

Community and ritualisation

The drone? - a collective and heightened

performance of identity

• Hooliganism ?