Just added this 'juvenilia' to my website

The London Marathon 1985 - an essay - typed! - I did that year for the Open University Module on Popular Culture.  Apologies for crude Gramscianism but I stick to much of it.

Football's Crime Stats

There have been some recent think pieces in the media about the 'fall in crime' around the world.  Here the Guardian (25 April 2013 'Crime rate keeps falling despite austerity') finds criminologists 'surprised' but willing to offer a variety of  potential solutions.

This article from the Wall Street Journal runs through some: no lead in petrol, improved policing and use of prison.  Other suggestions are that the rise in legalised abortion to falls in crime (the Freakonomics argument) and more recently some suggest that playing video games leads to fall sin crime.  This blog post emphasises the empathic possibilities and my own work suggests the preferability of people stealing cars online in VL rather than in RL.  Others suggest games players are simply 'too busy' to commit crime.

But is crime falling?  As a criminologist Marion Fitzgerald is less sure that crime is falling; and, for other reasons, neither is the right, with accusations (Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2013) that the police have been keeping figures down for political reasons.  I too place little confidence in the accuracy of the figures, not because of cock-ups or conspiracies - though there have been examples of both - but because crime is a malleable social construct.

So it is with some interest that the 'fall' in crime appears to have been mirrored by fouls in football.  As the BBC say, 'The number of fouls committed by Premier League players has dropped by 22% since 2006, according to figures released for the first time'.  Obviously some suggestions are made for why this might be.  Since the definition of a foul is a very subjective matter I can't agree with Mark Riley of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (BBC 8 March 2013 'Can football learn from rugby union's attitude to referees?')
that "The referees at Premier League level get 95% of their decisions right, the assistant referees get 99% of their decisions right".

Interestingly just as fouls have fallen so has punishment.

Referees issued 52 red cards, the same as in 2006-07 and the joint lowest since 1996-97 when there were 44 dismissals. In 2011-12 there were 66 sending-offs, with a record 73 being shown in 2005-06.

And, again this should be of interest to criminologists and penal reformers education and self-policing seem to be cited as reasons!  What next restorative cautions? Are players routinely tested for lead?  We know many play soccer video games.  Has this made them less aggressive?

We’ll gesticulate how we want to: semiotics for cops

Not sure this sports criminology but involves sport and crime and policing!

When reading Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style I was never entirely convinced of the links he saw between punk and reggae though I listened to a bit of both and still enjoy the Clash.  I think he was correct in arguing that Punk’s use of the swastika was meant to shock or to imply ‘Berlin’ (and therefore Bowie etc) but feel he and his respondents were too naive in thinking they had succeeded.

For instance, Wallach notes (in Duncombe and Tremblay (eds) White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race) how the transposition of punk to Indonesia meant that its earliest adherents didn’t even know these shock or hip references.  It just meant punk.  But quite quickly a more political punk (he cites, for instance, the Dead Kennedy’s ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’) is seen to chime with their own position under Suharto’s dictatorship.

And Hamm (in American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime) notes the outgrowth of skinhead Oi music from some of the same roots which did fully embrace the Nazi regalia and ideology without robbing Wagner’s music box.  And Thompson (Punk Productions: unfinished business) is right to argue that punk may have attempted to empty Nazi symbols (and bondage gear for that matter) of their signifying power but failed to do so.  Yet whenever I happened across any punk wearing a swastika the bricolage of their clothing (see also Punk & the Swastika) and other accessories (Malcolm and Vivien’s Accessories franchise anyone) meant I never felt I was dealing with a Nazi.  Though I have felt that when dealing with others more conventionally dressed.

So am I easily reassured by a torn neon jumper and multi-dyed hair as counters to the message of the swastika?  Or is it too much cultural studies and semiotics and knowledge of Hindu (mention of Prince Harry in this BBC story) and Roman (was hoping to find a Mary Beard ref but here Hull Museum pitch in) uses of the swastika.  Or would anyone easily recognise that however offensive, they were not Nazis?

megan ruminates on “Can you accidentally do a Nazi salute?”, the case of Giorgos Katidis a 20 year old Greek footballer now banned for life for celebrating a goal with a nazi salute.  He claimed not to know its significance.  He may want to know about Basil Fawlty’s knack of not ‘mentioning the war’.  Not that this was much assistance to Mark Bosnich, the Aston Villa goalkeeper, who in 1996 was fined £1,000 for what he said was a Basil Fawlty impression in front of Spurs fans.

And talking of my team.  Whilst I don’t chant ‘Yids’ or ‘Yiddo’ on my rare visits I’d happily admit to being one, particularly to a non-threatening Arsenal fan in a solidaristic Spartacus sort of way.  Been known to let people think I’m gay (and certainly sung along with Tom Robinson Glad to be Gay) in the same spirit.  But I know full well that some do find the chanting offensive.  We’ll ignore the ironic potential of David Baddiel using the Daily Mail to argue it sustains anti-semitism.  And apparently the club has defended supporters against similar complaints from the Society of Black Lawyers.

Just as I know that no offense is meant to the jewish supporters of Spurs by the chants I suspect little support for them or wider Jewry either which is why I decline to join in.  Which brings me to the upcoming NE derby between Newcastle and Sunderland.  Northumbria Police have apparently decided that this is no Twitterjoke and intends to use CCTV to collect evidence should any Newcastle fans seek to mock the Sunderland manager’s alleged fascism with nazi salutes.  The BBC says, ‘Northumbria Police said such gestures would not be treated "as a joke".  Spurs fans sensitive to the criticisms and proud defenders of free speech now chant ‘We’ll sing what we want to’.  Will the Toon Army now chant ‘We’ll gesticulate what we want to’?  Or all turn up in Hitler moustaches or chant ‘Yiddos’ perhaps?

recommending ‘Fighting is the Most Real and Honest Thing’ by Brent and Kraska

You could see this as cultural criminology, sport sociology, part of the sociology of masculinity; here I'm claiming it for sports criminology.


‘Fighting is the Most Real and Honest Thing’ Violence and the Civilization/Barbarism Dialectic

1. John J. Brent^* and

1. Peter B. Kraska

* Doctoral Fellow, University of Delaware, Department of Criminology/Sociology, Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies, Newark, DE 19716, USA; JBrent@udel.edu; P.B. Kraska, School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA, Peter.Kraska@eku.edu.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the activity of ‘cage-fighting’ has attracted massive audiences and significant attention from media and political outlets. Underlying the spectacle of these mass-consumed events is a growing world of underground sport fighting. By offering more brutal and less regulated forms of violence, this hidden variant of fighting lies at the blurry and shifting intersection between licit and illicit forms of recreation. This paper offers a theoretical and ethnographic exploration of the motivations and emotive frameworks of these unsanctioned fighters. We find that buried within the long-term process towards greater civility rest the seeds for social unrest, individual rebellion and ontological upheaval. By revealing the dialectical relationship between contemporary mechanisms of control and these uncivil performances, we argue these transgressions are a visceral reaction to today’s highly rationalized modes of state and social governance. More broadly, we attempt to understand the interrelationship between contemporary controls and sport fighting as a microcosm of the long-running struggle between civility and barbarism.