A criminalização das torcidas organizadas de futebol

Abstract

This paper is a study of the organized cheerers of the Brazilian soccer game, in special the Mafia Azul, organized cheerers of the Cruzeiro team, and the Galoucura, organized cheerers of the Atlético Mineiro team. In the middle of the 60's, when the Standardized Cheerers turned into Organized Cheerers, there were also modifications in the practices, in the behavior and in the relations between these fans. With the increase of the visibility of the behavior of the Organized ones, several studies of areas and different scientific ideas appeared. Due to modifications which occurred in the practice of cheering, the organized fans started to be a target of the government that, since 2000, is asking for its extinction because of the violence and vandalism practiced by some of them. A study on the violence practiced by organized soccer fans is necessary since the soccer is the most practiced sporting activity in the world and, so, of great social relevance. With a study that combines bibliographical research, research of data published by the media (newspapers, specialized magazines and television) and field work carried out during the Mineiro Soccer Championship of 2008, the present work has as objective the analyses of the social construction of the organized soccer cheerers as a public problem. The communication and the linguistic speech have an extreme importance in the construction of the social structure, in the constitution of the individual and of his social image. From the understanding of the different perspectives and present conceptions in the social theories, we will observe the processes relating to crimes of the organized cheerers taking as a theoretical referential the approach of Howard Becker and Joseph R. Gusfield, researches who showed us that a behavior is only diverting, in other words criminal, at the exact moment it was defined. In this way, the people in charge of formulating and imposing the rules in the society are also the people responsible for most of the labels and construction of the truth. These theoreticians realize the social environment like supplier of categories that label and stigmatize the individual. The field work corroborated with the bibliographical and scientific researches relating the criminal of the organized cheerers.