I'm studying the "BARRAS BRAVAS"

I am studying the problem or case, from its beginning, of the “barras bravas”, specifically from Colo Colo and the University of Chile. The concept of “barras bravas” refers to the group of individuals, fundamentally made up of young people, who organize themselves to support a football team. They also, at great risks, are characterized as violent due to their delinquent acts committed during football games at the stadium and in the streets outside of the event.

In order to study this problem, I have had to constantly attend the activities organized by these young people that occur inside and outside of the stadium, in other words, I have been a participating observer, a known method in the anthropological field.

The interesting part of their system is that not all of the participants in these groups are delinquents, like the majority of the mass communications portray them. In general, the participants are people that have few resources and are from marginal sectors of the city, however, none of the participants are exactly the same.

From the beginning, the first element of the “barras bravas”, from Colo Colo and the University of Chile, that caught my attention, was that I could observe these young people from a different view because I had already attended games at the stadium, but now I have the tools necessary to describe and present the “barras bravas” from a new perspective.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/methods/participant%20observation.html
http://www.revision-notes.co.uk/revision/586.html
http://www.csociales.uchile.cl/publicaciones/biblioteca/docs/libros/barras.pdf