What motivates extreme pro-group action, such as heroism and self-sacrifice on the battlefield? Despite much scholarly attention in recent years, the question is yet to be fully explained. Recent research suggests that shared dysphoric experiences are one way of generating identity fusion, a visceral sense of 'oneness' between individual and group that has been shown to motivate willingness to fight and die for the group. Using two special populations - British and Brazilian football fans - this thesis investigates the causes and consequences of fusion. Football fan cultures are diverse, globally popular, and ripe for examining intergroup conflict. This thesis focuses on two related components of the 'shared dysphoria pathway' to fusion: emotional arousal (e.g. watching one's team suffer a particularly bitter defeat) and the sense of 'self-transformativeness' that ensues from intense, shared experiences. Across four studies, it is shown that for some individuals, sharing the agony of defeat can be emotionally and physiologically arousing to such a degree so as to transform their sense of personal identity. In turn, this leads to a more porous boundary between group and individual identities, i.e. individuals become 'fused' with their groups. Fused people are documented as engaging in some of the most extreme and potentially dangerous social behaviours we know. Two related consequences of fusion are examined: extreme pro-group action and outgroup hostility. Football hooliganism is a persistent, global problem, which is addressed in a fifth study. This thesis refutes past work suggesting that hooligans are social misfits, instead contending that hooligans are especially fused to their group and motivated to defend their 'brothers-in-arms', which results in outgroup violence. These findings suggest that a more thorough understanding of the causes and consequences of fusion could conceivably impact a great many areas, perhaps most importantly conflict resolution and policies relating to intergroup conflict.

The thesis is a contribution to the analysis of media representation through the use of critical discourse analysis of twelve English written articles by Russian and international media sources. The articles were chosen in relation to the unauthorised Pussy Riot protest in the Cathedral in Moscow back in February 2012, and the societal changes that have taken place thereafter. The analysed articles have been written and published between February 2012 and January 2014. The aim with the study is to see how media sources from different geographical backgrounds described the same events and news.

Rien de prime abord ne rapproche le sport et la violence. Le sport contribue à un épanouissement personnel alors que la violence est un moyen d’oppression. Du fait de l’augmentation croissante des violences sportives, le droit du sport s’est trouvé dépassé. Le droit pénal est alors intervenu à son secours afin de réprimer et de faire diminuer ces violences. Au fil du temps, le droit pénal a pris une place de plus en plus importante dans le contentieux sportif, de sorte qu’un droit pénal spécifique du sport a émergé. Si le droit pénal ne peut plus intervenir dans le contentieux sportif en raison du particularisme fort qui caractérise le droit du sport, la création d’un droit pénal du sport est devenue nécessaire, avec ses incriminations spécifiques, en conservant toutefois un droit pénal commun, également applicable en droit du sport. Pour autant le droit du sport est encadré par le droit pénal mais également par le droit disciplinaire. Toutefois, le droit du sport s’autorégule si bien qu’il se suffit à lui seul et qui n’a pas besoin de recourir systématiquement au droit pénal. Peu à peu une dépénalisation s’est mise en place. Le droit pénal a alors pu prendre ses distances avec le droit du sport afin de laisser la pratique sportive s’épanouir. En somme, si l’intervention du droit pénal en droit du sport est devenue inéluctable, il n’en demeure pas moins que le droit du sport, compte tenu de sa spécificité, est capable de s’autoréguler / Nothing at first only brings sport and violence. Sport contributes to personal fulfillment while violence is a means of oppression. Due to the increasing violence of sports, sports law has been overtaken. Criminal law is then stepped to his aid to suppress and decrease the violence. Over time, criminal law has become an increasingly important litigation in the sports, so that a specific criminal law of sport has emerged. If the criminal law can no longer intervene in the sports litigation because of the strong individualism that characterizes sports law, the creation of a criminal law sport has become necessary, with specific offenses, keeping however a common criminal, also apply in the sports law. However sports law is framed by the criminal law, but also by the disciplinary law.However, sports law regulates itself so that it is sufficient in itself and does not need to systematically use the criminal law. Gradually decriminalization was implemented. Criminal law was then able to distance sports law to allow the sport to flourish. In sum, if the intervention of criminal law sports law has become inevitable, the fact remains that sports law, given its specificity, is able to regulate itself

Football violence was a rare phenomenon in France until the nineteen eighties. Harsh economic times coupled with the challenges of unemployment brought a different type of fanatic to football stadia. To vent their frustration about the economic difficulties of their time, some fans found an easy scapegoat: the increasing number of African immigrants in France. These fans, known as hooligans, have become organized and can be found supporting most major French football clubs, disrupting what once was a relatively tranquil national pastime. This thesis traces their development in France, looks at what they borrowed from Italian and English fan groups, and suggests how their organization is now uniquely French.

L’objet de la recherche consiste à mettre en évidence que la prise en compte des violences émeutières requiert une évolution de l’environnement juridique et des méthodes de maintien de la paix publique hérités de notre histoire. Notre dispositif de gestion de l’ordre public est particulièrement adapté au modèle français de manifestation. C’est considérable et exemplaire à beaucoup d’égards mais cela ne peut clore le débat sur les formes de la réaction sociale nécessaires pour répondre aux différentes formes du répertoire de la protestation en particulier à la dynamique complexe des désordres émeutiers.Alors que la manifestation, son encadrement par les forces de sécurité intérieure et son environnement juridique ressortissent à la culture de l’organisation et de l’ordre, les violences émeutières relèvent, quant à elles, de comportements colériques naturels. Elles constituent un objet et un enjeu différents que traduisent notamment la récurrence des crises en milieu urbain et la difficulté d’y faire face de façon satisfaisante.Sur le plan opérationnel comme sur le plan juridique, l’éventail de la réponse aux désordres est particulièrement large, mais il traduit également un double embarras :• Les violences émeutières sont le plus souvent des violences d’expression. Qu’ils en soient conscients ou non, face à ces comportements, le juge et le politique se sont montrés fréquemment indulgents dans un contexte juridique où la liberté d’expression est un droit fondamental et la manifestation une conquête sans équivalent dans notre pays. Les réponses sociale et judiciaire se caractérisent donc par une mansuétude parfois légitime, parfois inadaptée mais souvent mal comprise.• Les modes d’action policiers et les outils du Droit façonnés par l’environnement juridique et la culture de la manifestation, peuvent se révéler inadaptés pour répondre aux émeutes urbaines et conduire à des évolutions aussi variées qu’inappropriées comme la banalisation du recours à des régimes juridiques d’exception et la sédimentation d’une culture d’affrontement entre police et population.Le concept retentissement / identification et l’analyse des colères rebelles et insoumises ouvrent la voie à une adaptation du droit et de la réponse sociale conciliant le respect des droits fondamentaux et le maintien de la paix publique dans l’espace urbain. Tel est l’enjeu de la dialectique « Libertés - Droit - désordres ». / The object of the research is to highlight that rioting violence cannot be dealt with without an evolution of the legal framework and public-order policing inherited from our History. Our way to manage public-order policing is particularly suitable to our French traditional demonstration pattern. It is significant and exemplary in many respects but that alone cannot close the debate about the forms of social reaction that would be necessary to answer the various forms of the repertoire of protest especially the complex dynamics of rioting disorders.Even though the demonstration, its framing by the police and its legal framework are both an order issue and a cultural issue, rioting acts of violence are a natural irascible behaviour of the human nature. Riots are an object and an issue which translate into in recurring urban crises and the difficulty to satisfactorily deal with them.From an operational point of view and from a judicial one, there is a wide range of answers to the disorders but this results in a double embarrassment:• Riots are very often a means of expression. Consciously or not, the judge and the policy-maker have frequently been indulgent with these behaviours in a legal context in which freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and demonstrating a conquest without equivalent in our country. Social and judicial answers are characterized by indulgence, sometimes legitimate, sometimes inadequate and often ill-understood.• Policing and the tools of the law that were shaped by the legal framework and the culture of demonstration can prove to be inadequate to cope with urban riots and they can result in various as well as inappropriate answers like the trivialization of emergency legal schemes and the sedimentation of a culture of clash between people and the police.The repercussion and identification concept and the analysis of the rebel and unsubdued bouts of anger pave the way to an adaptation of the law and the social response aiming at balancing both the expression of the basic rights and the preservation of public peace in urban areas. This is what is at stake with the dialectics « Liberties – Law – Disorder ».