‘The conductor of the orchestra’: interaction Ritual Chains, social identity, and emotional contagion in Turkish football terraces

When a terrace leader raises his hand and thousands fall silent, something theoretically significant is happening. This study proposes an integrative model synthesizing Collins’s Interaction Ritual Chains, the Elaborated Social Identity Model, and Le Bon’s contagion thesis to explain leader–crowd dynamics in Turkish football supporter communities. Drawing on interviews with six leaders, written narratives from six supporters, and field observations by six observers, two primary findings emerge. First, core-group members experience a normatively structured, bounded, and reversible social identity shift consistent with ESIM rather than Le Bon’s regression thesis. Second, terrace authority is accumulated through labour, sacrifice, and prototypicality institutionalized in the abi–kardeş hierarchy, mapping onto paternalistic leadership constructs and paralleling South American barra brava mechanics, while remaining exclusionary along gender lines. A third finding identifies a boundary condition for ESIM: compliance driven by pragmatic calculation rather than identity alignment. State surveillance suppresses cathartic discharge while paradoxically reinforcing leader authority.