Hey Andrew,
It struck me that throughout the media coverage - and that includes interviews with 'good honest members of the public' - the tendency is towards dehumanizing/downgrading the value of those people who are on the streets. I've variously heard them referred to as rats, vermin, scum etc. Mobilizing this terminology serves to cast those rioting as 'irrational', so that it isn't our responsibility (nor is it even possible) to understand why people are rioting. Indeed, the acts of the rioters becomes understood as individuals deviating from what any 'normal and rational' form of thought would suggest is the right course of action - these rioters are hence cast as deviants, idiots or animals - and it's their supposed inferiority that has led them to rioting. The discourse on 'youth' fits nicely in with all of this, where the youth is the 'yet-to-be fully rational' subject. It's mobilization also introduces a clear linear superiority over those who are doing the rioting, where it is the responsibility of us 'rational adults' to discipline the 'irrational youth'.
All of this language, and the Othering process, is very dangerous. Yesterday a YouGov poll (http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yougov_england_riot_results_pdf_pr.pdf) suggested that 90 per cent of Britons believe police should be able to use water cannons to quell rioting, while a third believe they should have the use of live ammunition. Such calls for martial law to be imposed on the rioters is terrifying, and something that can only be rationalized through an Othering and dehumanizing process. How else could you support the maiming and killing of people? The othering process is opening the door for numerous extreme right-wing policies, and the 'public order' issue of the Olympics is likely to only further fuel a rational for all sorts of Draconian policies.
Like Tim suggested, this comes down to an idea of the 'norm', which for me means what a 'normal' person would be capable of rationalizing. The riot act has been cast outside of the realm of the rational, and hence the rioter is understood as someone who 'has something wrong in their head'. Hence the way of dealing with them requires paranormal techniques, varying from shooting them, through to cutting their benefits, or kicking them out of their social housing (all of which are variously being suggested).
Of course, what we ought to be doing is trying to understand the riot act as an emotional response to the alienation, smashed aspirations, hopelessness etc. etc. What is the potent mix of conditions that has led people emotionally disposed to rioting? Indeed, the pertinent question becomes, why am I not out there rioting too? What's different between my conditions (historically and at present), and the conditions of those who looted footlocker?
Bert
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From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Timothy Raeymaekers [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 5:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The London Riots
Hi Andrew,
Good luck with bringing up that challenging debate.
For me this 'youth' issue also echoes some of the greed-versus-grievance discussion of the early 1990s with regard to Africa's "civil" conflicts (with authors like Paul Collier and Paul Richards arguing about their respective importance - not accidentally both British authors). To me these debates brought up an interesting issue of categorization: is a gun toting kid looting Freetown or Kinshasa shops a "rebel" or just a mindless irrational thug? Obviously the term 'youth' also has been used somewhat elastically there, as often entire generations felt excluded from existing systems of socio-economic redistribution. For me, authors like Richards convincingly argued at the time that what is often too easily brandished as "criminal" behaviour in such contexts always underpins some challenge to an established norm - be it corrupt patrimonial political systems in Africa or British social policies... Maybe someone is willing to take up that parallel after all...
Best
Tim
On Aug 10, 2011, at 10:41 PM, Andrew Wooff wrote:
> I am a PhD student at the University of Dundee examining the impact and responses of people and authority to anti-social behaviour. As such, a lot of the coverage of the London riots has interested me - not least because of the way that the problem of 'youth' is being framed by the media. I thought I would note a couple of initial thoughts and see what others think.
>
> The media and those in power are banding about the term 'youth' in relation to the riots in a very uncritical way. Although a lot of young people appear to be involved in the looting and violence, the media and those in power appear to be framing the entire problem as 'youth mob violence' (various papers - particularly the Daily Mail), a problem with 'feral youth' (Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London and Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority) and a breakdown in parenting. While there may be elements of truth to some of the arguments, I think that framing the problem in such a youth orientated manner risks deepening the disconnect that many young people feel in their 'communities' across the UK. This so-called disconnect has been widely reported as one of the key reasons why many of the looter's are out on the streets in the first place. Those organising the clean up via social networking did receive widespread praise in the media and the majority of those taking part fell into the 'youth category (16-24)', yet the age of those participating in the organised clear-ups was hardly mentioned in the media. Those appearing in court yesterday and today in relation to the riots were aged between mid teens and late forties, with an average in the late twenties - clearly not only 'youths'.
>
> So why does it matter what age the rioters are? Perhaps rather than referring to 'youths'; using the labels looters, rioters and criminals would be suffice. Hannah Breeze's blog (available here http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/177012/why-do-we-care-if-the-rioters-are-young.thtml) provides some very interesting debate.
>
> I also thought the rhetoric that David Cameron was using today ('sick society') had very strong echoes of Tony Blair's anti-social behaviour/ Respect agendas of the early and mid 2000's. It will be interesting to see how this impacts on future criminal and anti-social behaviour policy.
>
> Andrew Wooff
> PhD student
> School of the Environment
> University of Dundee
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Web: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/geography/current/postgrad/students/wooff/
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