Torcida and Bad Blue Boys

Subculturalisation/tribalisation as a social process: The Yugoslav 1980s and the roots of the ultras subculture in Croatia

“…Our findings completely differ from the discourse that claims the mixing of styles and easy movement from one subculture/tribe to another is a characteristic of post-modern consumer capitalist societies from the late 1980s on. While our other research (Krnić and Perasović 2013; Perasović and Mustapić 2017; Perasović and Mustapić 2018; Perasović et al 2022) has shown that the ultras subculture/tribe (like the psy-trance subculture/tribe and many others) do not currently lack a certain firmness and power, as opposed to theses that focus exclusively on fluidity, impermanence, and the post-modern ‘pick and mix’ principle in building styles and temporary ‘neo-tribal’ identities, the current research concludes that young people used the ‘pick and mix’ principle in the past, using support at football stadiums combined with elements taken from other subcultures/tribes as the basis upon which to build their own style and identity. Due to this, as opposed to the division between subculturalists and post-subculturalists, we believe the processes of subculturalisation and tribalisation, which the current authors have observed in this paper with a focus on football supporters from the 1970s until the Croatian War of Independence, are one and the same.…”

“…Bad Blue Boys took this as it was intended – as an insult. With the exception of a very small group of Dinamo fans in 2010, whom all domestic ultras referred to as ‘mercenaries’ loyal to Zdravko Mamić (Perasović and Mustapić, 2018; Šantek, 2020), Torcida, BBB, and other fan groups never agreed to any concessions or ties to any political party or any part of the business, football, political, criminal, or media establishment. We hold that this characteristic – football supporters’ significant independence from club management and political institutions or parties throughout the long period after the subculturalisation process, from the early 1990s until today – is evidently tied to the process we have described from the 1980s, in which supporters and other youth subculture actors created resistance to a part of the mainstream world, accepting the best-known, oldest division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that exists in subculture: the difference between originality and commercialisation/collaboration, between ‘being yourself’ and ‘selling out’.…”

Remembering Brazil @Mexico1970: Social Media & Collective Memory Making in Times of COVID-19

“…34 As Perasović and Mustapić note in relation to histories of Split's HNK Hajduk football team in Croatia, club narratives have been intertwined with the country's dynamic progression from the former Yugoslavia, independent identity within ongoing Balkan geo-politics, and denials of the club's anti-fascist associations. 35 As others broadly note, collective memory making in football becomes profound when the seeming banality of individual experiences can be forged around shared events, times and spaces that resonate with some sort of contextual significance. This research contributes to the investigation of sports memory as an element of dispute in the polarization of political narratives in contemporary Brazil.…”

Sport i migranti u Hrvatskoj: kulturnoantropološka studija integracije izbjeglica

“…O ultrasima u Hrvatskoj najviše su pisali sociolozi Perasović i Mustapić (2013, 2017a, 2017b, 2020, zatim socijalni antropolog Hodges (2015Hodges ( , 2016aHodges ( , 2016bHodges ( , 2019 te kulturni antropolozi Šantek (2017) i Nuredinović (2019). Perasović i Mustapić pišu o supkulturi ultrasa, pri čemu supkulturu definiraju kao "društvenog aktera i simboličnu strukturu čije su vrijednosti i norme djelomično suprotstavljene onima iz njenog šireg društvenog okruženja" (2017b: 123).…”