'... Rivalry, hostility, and Romanita.' An ethnographic study of AS Roma's Ultras

This is an ethnographic study of Italian Ultras, the organized and ritualized fan organizations associated with professional soccer in Italy. It examines the relationship between their belief and behaviors, paying particular attention to their political behaviors. The study follows 15 months of anthropological fieldwork undertaken in Rome, Italy. Its goal is to assess the role that the Ultras' particular critical understanding of modernity plays in organizing and actualizing their behaviors inside and outside of sporting contexts. Part of my effort in this study is to examine local reactions to national and international issues of globalization and liberalization. In following this line of enquiry, which sets my study apart from recent scholarship on the Ultras, I hope to contribute to a more anthropologically informed discussion of the Ultras as a critical part of politically extreme responses to social and political predicaments of the early-21st Century.