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Description
The paper aims to explore process of becoming nationalist in Polish football supporters environment, namely the biographical paths that have shaped one’s orientation on nationalist-oriented activism. To this end, it uses Thomas and Znaniecki’s classic methodology which allows to study ‘process of becoming’ using autobiographical data. The analysis draws on 25 individual interviews with the nationalist activists from football supporters environment. It identifies three processes of becoming nationalist activist which are described as processes typical for keepers, awakened and followers.
Keepers were raised in family with strong memory of experience of war, where they internalized nationalist-martyrological attitude. This attitude had been nurtured until appearance of certain organizational circumstances which created the opportunity to act on behalf of this memory. Awakened adopted passive form of nationalist-martyrological attitude due to the influence of values presented in their families or in school. It transformed into the active form due to later impact of other supporters. In case of the followers national-martyrological attitude was established when they were already members of supporters groups and where they were mobilized to nationalist activism by other members of this community.
The results show that national-martyrological attitude is the foundation for activism of each of distinguished paths. These findings match with the results from international research showing that nationalist sentiments are more salient in countries when memory of wars is still present. Moreover, in cases of keepers and awakened, national-martyrological attitude was shaped during early socialization period. This seems important finding for studies focused on biographical paths to nationalist movements which have not considered impact of such attitudes.
