Shopping for Free? Looting, consumerism and the 2011 riots (original) (raw)
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This article is an initial analysis and theorization of original ethnographic data gathered from young men who participated in the English riots of August 2011. The data consistently suggest that consumer culture supplied these young men with a compelling motivation to join the rioting after the initial localized response to the original incident had died down. The data are analysed in a way that builds a theory of the rioting as a product of objectless dissatisfaction. Drawing upon the resources of contemporary cultural and critical criminological theory, it argues that, in the current post-political vacuum, the rioters could not locate or articulate the objective structural and processual causes of their marginalization. Neither could they clearly recognize or ethically censure their structural antagonists. Thus, in the entire absence of truthful, comprehensible and unifying political symbolism, they had nowhere to go but the shops.
Consumer culture and the London Riots of 2011
Exploring the events of the 2011 London riots through Robert Merton’s ‘strain’ theory to provide a deeper understanding of how living in a ‘Consumer Society’ can propel people into crime and why.
In this article we attempt to develop an analysis of the English urban riots of 2011. Rather than build on the assumption of organic resistance and protopolitics, we argue that the disturbances were a brief eruption of social unrest that lacked the clear, unifying political symbolism necessary to turn objectless dissatisfaction into articulate political demands. Rather, the consumer-oriented subjects who inhabit the socioeconomic margins of late capitalism were unable to make this political move and ultimately found themselves with nowhere to take their dissatisfaction but to the shops. This speaks loudly of the current condition of subjectivity in a postpolitical era dominated by neoliberalism and liberal postmodernism.
Cultural Politics, 2012
In this article we attempt to develop an analysis of the English urban riots of 2011. Rather than build on the assumption of organic resistance and protopolitics, we argue that the disturbances were a brief eruption of social unrest that lacked the clear, unifying political symbolism necessary to turn objectless dissatisfaction into articulate political demands. Rather, the consumer-oriented subjects who inhabit the socioeconomic margins of late capitalism were unable to make this political move and ultimately found themselves with nowhere to take their dissatisfaction but to the shops. This speaks loudly of the current condition of subjectivity in a postpolitical era dominated by neoliberalism and liberal postmodernism.
The English Riots of 2011: Misreading the signs on the road to the society of enemies
The recent financial crisis can be read as an early indicator of the coming contraction of the global ‘real economy’, a decline predicated on a permanent condition of resource-depletion, whose immediate socioeconomic effects, under the logic of neoliberal capitalism, are the shrinkage of the money-supply and mass unemployment. Despite the gravity of the situation, data collected by authors and associated ethnographers suggest that most current forms of unrest in the West are not proto-political protests. The failure of the Occupy movement and other organised protests to garner mass support despite their accurate identification of the object of ethical critique can be attributed to the absence of a coherent alternative ideology that represents a plausible and comprehensible means of reorganising the global economy. The recent English riots in 2011, which rapidly degenerated into aggravated shopping, failed entirely to deliver an articulate ethical or political message. This chapter locates this current post-political form as a major shift in the historical trajectory of unrest in the capitalist era. Should politics grounded in the real economy fail to reactivate, these localised eruptions are the harbingers of our future in a post-ethical, post-social and post-political world colonised by a pure market. In the meantime, liberal-left social science, trapped in obsolete intellectual frameworks from a superseded era of economic stability and organic political militancy, is underestimating the current crisis, its trajectory and its consequences.
Beyond the loot' Social disorder and urban unrest
2013
The article looks at current explanations for the 2011 English riots. It critiques one dominant view that, beyond the micro-political protest in Tottenham, people primarily participated to loot lifestyle items they could not afford to buy. Empirical data is used to challenge the extent and nature of the looting in 2011, concluding that the proportion of riot events that were not focused on looting, directly contradicts the argument that criminal acquisition and consumerism were primary drivers of the unrest. Social disorder is more likely to manifest as looting in commercial areas, but it does not naturally follow that participants originally set out to loot, and economics may not be their primary motive. The article moves on to explore the role the police may have played in promoting 'contagion' and to reflect on the role of policing in preventing and limiting unrest, even where foregrounded by other precipitating factors.
The article looks at current explanations for the 2011 English riots. It critiques one dominant view that, beyond the micro-political protest in Tottenham, people primarily participated to loot lifestyle items they could not afford to buy. Empirical data is used to challenge the extent and nature of the looting in 2011, concluding that the proportion of riot events that were not focused on looting, directly contradicts the argument that criminal acquisition and consumerism were primary drivers of the unrest. Social disorder is more likely to manifest as looting in commercial areas, but it does not naturally follow that participants originally set out to loot, and economics may not be their primary motive. The article moves on to explore the role the police may have played in promoting ‘contagion’ and to reflect on the role of policing in preventing and limiting unrest, even where foregrounded by other precipitating factors.
Knowledge Cultures 1(4): 98-105 , 2013
We challenge the prevalent opinion that consumption does not seem to matter as much as production and defy the fetishism of industrial work. We explore the implications of the premise that under conditions of cognitive capitalism consumption dictates what production does, when and how. We explain that in a post-industrial global society and economy fashion, branding, instant gratification of desires, and ephemeral consumer tastes govern production and consumption. The London (commodity) riots of August 2011 send us a warning that consumption and cognitive capitalism are asphyxiating in the structures and norms of industrial capitalism that are still in place.