Guardian riot series written by sociologists

Today (Monday, 5 September 2011), the Guardian launched a series of articles on the August riots, written by sociologists living or working in the areas affected, based on interviews with young people involved. The series ‘Behind the riots: what young people think about the 2011 summer unrest’  has been written in association with BSA Race and Ethnicity Study Group and kicks off with an article written by Malcolm James, a sociologist undertaking a PhD at the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics. This is a very welcome initiative which follows on from the British Sociological Association’s letter published in the Guardian on 11 August 2011 - recommending that sociologists be consulted to add real understanding to the summer unrest.  

• Behind the riots: what young people think about the 2011 summer unrest
• Behind the Salford riots: ‘the kids are angry’
• Behind the Wood Green riots: ‘a chance to stick two fingers up at the police’
• Behind the Brixton riots: ‘a sense of injustice and lack of entitlement’
• Behind the Manchester riots: ‘they are saying we have nothing’
• Behind the Birmingham riots: ‘the ultimate sacrifice for peace’
• Behind the Clapham riots: ‘the police are the enemy’
• Behind the Hackney riots: ‘Nobody seems to listen to us’
• Behind the Lewisham riots: ‘it was all about money’

Riot sanctions by Howard Wollman

At a time when the Mayor of London can suggest that he doesn’t want sociological explanations of the riots and the Coalition’s higher education policy will likely lead to a diminution of support for research and teaching in sociology and the other social sciences, we have all too much evidence that reveals why research from sociologists and other social scientists are vital to inform public policy.

Thus we have the widespread calls for cuts in benefits to those involved in the rioting and calls to evict the families of rioters from council housing. In the case of the former, nearly 200,000 people as of 14th August have signed up to the e-petition on the DirectGov website to demand that “Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed.” In the case of the latter, The Guardian reports that Wandsworth Council has already started eviction proceedings against a woman whose son has been charged (but not convicted) in connection with the rioting in Clapham (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/london-riots-wandsworth-council-eviction?INTCMP=SRCH). A number of other London Councils are reported to be considering similar measures.

There are several issues that might be considered in relation to these responses. One is that of double punishment. If arrest and court procedures are the means by which lawbreaking is dealt with in society, does the imposition of additional sanctions not actually weaken the criminal justice processes. Should magistrates and judges be trying to anticipate, in their own sentencing policies, the likely additional sanctions that might be imposed through eviction and benefit cuts? And why, uniquely should conviction (or even being charged) over riot related offences produce such sanctions when murder, rape, armed robbery, or phone hacking should not?

The eviction of council tenants who cause substantial upset to their neighbours through their antisocial behaviour in the locality is at least a policy where there is a clear relationship between offence and sanction and is one that provides a measure of protection for those who have been affected by their behaviour. The collective punishment of the family of participants in a riot does no such thing and inevitably contributes to the further marginalisation and impoverishment of those young people and their families.

As for the suggestion that all welfare benefits should be removed from those convicted of criminal acts, one wonders if this should be for all time? Would this apply to child benefit if those convicted have children or were to have children in the future? Would it, in the fullness of time, extend to the provision – or rather non-provision – of state pension? Without reducing explanation of the riots to issues of social exclusion, unemployment, poor education and lack of opportunity, it would be strange if none of these factors played some part in the events of last week. How much would cutting benefits contribute to resolving any of these issues and reducing the chances of further rioting. If a class of law breaker with nothing at all to lose is created by such measures, surely this must inevitably lead to more criminality. Indeed with no money for subsistence, let alone the consumer goods so clearly in demand in the looting, how could it not lead to more theft, more burglary and probably more rioting?

In ‘The Guardian’ Martin Kettle (11th August) called for the Prime Minister to “commission a proper sociological analysis of the rioters and what they did to our country this week” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/11/talk-rioters-not-turn-back-on-them). If ever there was a week that demonstrated the ongoing need for well conducted sociological research that can lead to greater public understanding and inform policy, then this was it. Then we wouldn’t have to listen to so many proposed measures that are not only unjust but would inevitably make our problems worse not better.

Howard Wollman, BSA Vice Chair

The riots: poverty cannot be ignored by Tracy Shildrick

Boris Johnson claims that he has ‘’heard too much sociological explanation and not enough condemnation” about the recent riots in British cities.  Sociological research has long been at the very heart of key social problems and issues, but its messages are often ones which challenge and unsettle, so little wonder Boris is wary, if not dismissive of what we might be able to offer. Condemnation is a simple response – and there has been no shortage of it, even from some of those involved in the riots – but explaining and understanding the causes of these events is much harder.  The sociological discipline has, in large part, been defined by those prepared to take risks and work alongside the poorest and the most marginalised in society. Despite the increasing weight of ethical surveillance, sociologists continue to engage regularly, and often over the longer term, with those who are defined as ‘hard to reach’ and those experiencing some of the most entrenched and difficult social and personal problems. Hence sociologists are well placed to offer informed, empirically grounded evidence on many of the most intractable and difficult issues of our times, including the recent riots.

The government were quick, and probably incorrect, to label the recent riots as gang related. This is a commonplace political and media response towards many issues which involve young working class men and it shows deep misunderstandings, as well as being indicative of the longstanding tendency to negatively label working class youth. The government seem ready to admit that they are badly in need of education around gang related issues (above and beyond the recent riots) but serious questions have been asked – including by some senior British police officers -  as to whether employing the services of a US gang expert is the best way forward.  There is some fascinating and groundbreaking work being undertaken by leading sociologists in UK universities, looking at gang related issues in our own cities and this important, home grown research ought to be to the forefront of any such conversations.

When David Cameron posits that ‘there are pockets of our society who are not just broken, but frankly sick’ (Cameron 2011) he perpetuates a moral smokescreen that obscures the real causes of the recent events and feeds pernicious myths about the causes of poverty and worklessness. As politicians seek to connect the riots to poverty which is supposedly self-inflicted and further with any multitude of problems all too frequently associated with ‘the poor’, such as ‘children without fathers’, ‘poor parenting’ and ‘widespread moral collapse’, sociologists should seek to redress the balance with robust critique and powerful evidence, of which there is plenty.

The UK is deeply economically divided and severe and entrenched poverty exists in many areas with real and damaging consequences for those who experience it.  The youth phase remains powerfully divided by social class with those at the very bottom facing multiple barriers which are not easily overcome. Most poverty is not caused by (or driven by, to use the current preferred policy speak) issues such as individual fecklessness, idleness or irresponsible consumption habits: poverty is primarily caused by low pay and inadequate benefits. Politicians of all persuasions have tried hard to divorce the riots from any discussion about the current spending cuts.  The problems of poverty did not go away under the previous government, but things were slowly improving for those on the lowest incomes. Much of this progress is now in danger of being swept away as those at the bottom face the greatest threat from the cuts instigated by those at the top. Research shows that relative poverty is set to rise over the coming period, making those already poor very vulnerable indeed. Welfare reform is targeting many of the most vulnerable in society, including those on sickness benefits. Cuts in public services are likely to affect the poorest most as they often have little choice but to rely on these services.

Young people are already facing dramatically high rates of unemployment but for the poorest young people their difficulties look likely to get even worse.  Cuts to support for the poorest in terms of Education Maintenance Allowance will further damage those already struggling to remain in education. The proposed Future Jobs Fund was heralded by the TUC as the most progressive employment programme for a generation which would have greatly assisted the young unemployed into meaningful employment. This has now gone, abandoned by the coalition government in an attempt to save money, with nothing in its place other than rapidly rising youth unemployment, and far too many people chasing every notified vacancy.  If the options for our poorest young people were limited under Labour they stand to be further seriously curtailed under the current coalition government. Numerous projects aimed at supporting those in the most difficult circumstances, particularly the young unemployed, are now closing, with many of the people previously charged with assisting the workless now joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed themselves.

The cuts and their implications for those who are poorest and economically marginal are a key part of the debate about the recent riots and cannot be ignored. In a deeply unequal society where those at the bottom face blocked opportunities and bleak prospects – regardless of how hard they work to escape – frustration is bound to fester. Yet riots of the sort witnessed recently are very rare and neither are they simply the preserve of the poorest in society. Nonetheless, given the stark nature of the economic inequalities that we face – and the real prospect of their exacerbation rather than their diminution in the coming period – it might be more apposite to ask why we have not seen more of this sort of overt discontent. Of course, we may well do so in the coming months and years. 

Tracy Shildrick, Youth Research Unit (Director), Teesside University

Riots, respect and research by Abby Day

Mindless, crass, materialistic, and, probably most unforgiveable by those on the left, apolitical. Those are the common descriptors of, principally, the young people involved in last week’s riots.

Unsurprisingly, they are the words most commonly employed to describe young people even in the absence of rioting. When the people I interview want to blame someone for society’s problems they tend to turn to one of three trusted foes: young people, racialised others, or bad mothers. This week, we had all three bundled into one neat, simple package.

The reasons for this bad behaviour are also simple and threefold: lack of moral training, too much commercialised, celebrity-focused TV, and the crumbling of authority. Social scientists like me who study people and their beliefs collect and share startlingly similar stories told in similar tones by older people about young people whether in the US, the UK, or Australia.

They run like this: ‘when I was young, we would give up our seats on buses to older people/never talk back/say please and thank you/and if we got into trouble picking apples from a tree in the village the local policeman would haul us by the ear home where our fathers would give us a good hiding’.  And what’s needed now, we are told, is: jail/military service/uniforms/the death penalty/more police on the streets.   In anthropology, we call these shared explanations ‘tropes’: they are the myths, the nostalgic legends, passed on through generations of how life apparently was and, more importantly, how it should be.

What we need to do now is stop circulating those myths through simple headlines and start listening to the people involved.  Of course what they did was wrong, of course they know better and of course they should be held accountable – but many of them are children and a disproportionate number are young adults. Sending them to jail will ruin their lives.

If what underpins their actions is disrespect for authority, we need to start asking: what are they angry about and who, precisely, don’t they respect? In my research, I have never found cases of young people disrespecting authority for its own sake: they have favourite teachers, youth workers, faith leaders, family members. They believe that some forms of authority are more legitimate than others. Young people have values and strong beliefs: they believe in people with whom they feel they belong – people with whom they have emotional, respectful, trusting relationships. That’s usually not going to be a father who beats them or a policeman who cuffs them around the ear, or a politician who jails them or cuts their EMAs or chances at college or university, or a banker who laughs all the way to the bank. 

Kicking off and grabbing loot is perhaps not a politically mature form of protest, but it may be the only way those involved felt they could act out and communicate  their disrespect and anger. That form of articulation needs to be deciphered and understood with time, empathy and, yes, respect. Fortunately, there are many well-qualified researchers in many disciplines, including anthropology, theology, geography, sociology, political science, and psychology who will be doing just that.

Dr Abby Day, Research Fellow, University of Sussex

Copping the Blame by Hugo Gorringe and Michael Rosie

August witnessed the worst urban disorder in England in living memory. We saw people motivated by opportunities to attack the police and to loot – criminality if you like – but there are also longstanding issues around deprivation and the lack of meaningful prospects for young people. Politicians preach about ‘individual responsibility’, but there has been a stark abdication of ‘social responsibility’ from within Britain’s political elite. The last 30 years has seen the gap between rich and poor widen dramatically, and increasing numbers of people in Britain are now marginalised within the economy, society, and the political system. This is not simply objective ‘poverty’ it is also about being unable to live the lifestyles that are vaunted in a rampantly consumeristic society. As Zygmunt Bauman has argued: “These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.”

Much of the post-riot debate will rightly focus on the marginalised and ‘disqualified’ in British society, on the interplay of class, race and generation. That Haringey’s youth club provision was slashed by one quarter this summer should alert us to the real impact that cuts are having on the fabric of our society, materially and ‘morally’. Sociology is well placed to contribute to, to provoke, just such a debate. We should also provoke debate on the impact of quite savage cuts to police budgets. Good policing does not come cheap.

The police have faced much criticism for being ‘too soft’ and politicians have lined up to recommend forceful technological solutions. Research on public order policing demonstrates that what police fear most is a loss of control, so we might have expected the police to welcome additions to their armoury. When an ACPO President argues against the use of rubber bullets and water cannon (despite being one of the few senior UK cops to have authorised and deployed both tactics), therefore, it is worth taking notice. Of course, ACPO are keen to protect police budgets and numbers from the cuts, but it is just as clear that the disorder in London was dampened by police strength in numbers. Small numbers of police can displace those intent on attacking shops, buses and passers-by, but only to less policed and protected streets. Thus we saw some areas protected whilst others burned. Only large numbers of police can actually disperse and discourage such crowds. Peace in London, thus, was bought at risk to other cities. The fact that many local public order officers had been bussed south seems to have encouraged attacks on boutique shops in central Manchester.

The invoking of ‘mutual aid’ arrangements takes time, costs money, and carries risks. The idea that Cameron flew in and sorted out a ‘timid’ police response was pure showboating, and has provoked a furious reaction from police officers whose tactics were limited by the lack of trained and equipped officers on the ground. English forces face a real term budget cut of 20% – Scottish forces are planning for a 24% cut. This is not simply about reducing the number of police, it is also about the resources necessary to properly train and equip officers to deal with the communication, negotiation and physical challenges of managing public anger. Good policing does not come cheap – democratic policing even less so.

What ACPO recognises is that British policing rests on a consent that can be withdrawn when relations between police forces and their publics become too strained. An era of savage cuts for public services – run by a millionaires’ cabinet bailing out errant bankers – does not augur well for good police-public relations. Many officers genuinely fear the front-line impact of cuts should we see a repeat of widespread disorder. The argument that the disorder was ‘criminality pure and simple’ does not carry weight. The media may pick up on unusual cases in court, but these exceptions prove a general rule. The fact that the riots took different forms in different places and that at least some of those hauled before the courts are not ‘the usual suspects’ suggests that we need to look for more complex explanations. Even if we agree with Cameron, surely we must be asking what led so many people to engage in mass criminality at this particular juncture. For once we find ourselves in full agreement with the president of ACPO; rather than investing in technologies to control riots we should be asking why they arose in the first place and how they might be prevented in future.

Following widespread urban disorder in the past, the Government commissioned inquiries into the riots, but the current government seems reluctant to call for such an investigation. Perhaps they wish to avoid a repeat of the Scarman report into the 1981 riots which concluded that socio-economic deprivation and aggressive policing helped fuel the disturbances and called for more proactive police engagement with affected communities. Such an approach could enhance the legitimacy of the police and open up lines of communication that would alert them to the potential for trouble. Blaming individual criminality, of course, better suits the cuts agenda.

Hugo Gorringe & Michael Rosie, Sociology, University of Edinburgh

Sociology and the riots by Mark Doidge

As the waves of rioting and looting swept across English cities over the weekend, there quickly followed waves of moral indignation and navel gazing. Thousands of words of explanation and condemnation have been expressed on television, in the traditional print media and social media like blogs and Twitter. The speed with which the riots and backlash spread represents the difficulties facing the discipline of sociology. Paradoxically it also represents its importance. Despite Boris Johnson’s dismissal of ‘sociological explanations’ for the riots, all of those expressing an opinion are drawing on sociological explanations. Even those who are arguing that it is not social are calling for greater policing or better parenting. These are sociological explanations and illustrate how different sections of society draw on different frames of reference to understand complex issues.

To some extent we all judge and classify individuals and groups based on varying sets of criteria. Traditionally class, gender, race and sexuality have been the major classifications. As society has transformed in relation to a restructured global economy and technological advances, greater subtlety is used to distinguish between groups and account for a full historical, cultural and moral framework. An item of clothing, piece of music or accent all help to frame our understandings of others.

Sociologists seek to interrogate these assumptions and narratives and elucidate a deeper meaning. As Pierre Bourdieu argued, “Taste…. Classifies the classifier”. We look at both sides of the argument to expose the full picture. In addition, we draw from wider research into similar situations and extrapolate a broader meaning. By taking a holistic approach, sociologists can not only understand the immediate actions but also place this into its wider context. In doing so we get beyond the superficial details and draw out a wider framework within its historical, cultural and social context.

Many explanations have been put forward for the riots. For some it is an erosion of morality, weak or non-existent parenting, and not enough police. On the assumption that many rioters were on benefits, an e-petition quickly circulated calling for those found guilty to lose their benefits (despite early verdicts showing that children, a teaching assistant and a student from an affluent family were involved). For others it was a consequence of economic instability that resulted in social clubs being closed and high unemployment, creating a sense of anomie and helplessness. In reality all of these, and many more, will have had an effect on what occurred. There is no simple explanation. The immediate interactions surrounding the tragic death of Mark Duggan played a significant part. But it is also important to see how this fitted into the wider narratives of the community, their daily dealings with the police and political leaders, and educational and economic issues.

Only through a thorough investigation, which analyses the full context, can we prevent a similar situation from occurring. This is not to condone what happened, no more than identifying the causes of lung cancer is condoning smoking. We cannot make the assumption that everyone, both those involved and those passing judgment, have all the information and are choosing to ignore it. As sociologists, we can provide the additional information that helps to build a more coherent understanding of the problems and help to prevent a repetition of the social upheaval of the last week. We can provide the wider research and contextualisation and arbitrate in the public debate. It can (and will) prove difficult as many views from many sides of the debate are firmly entrenched, but in doing so we can demonstrate the importance of our discipline both to society and ourselves.

Mark Doidge, University of Exeter

The riots: clarity not justification by Michael Keith

“Its time we stopped hearing all this (you know) nonsense about how there are deep sociological justifications for wanton criminality and destruction of peoples’ property.

“Whatever peoples’ grievances may be it does not justify smashing up someone’s shop, wrecking their livelihood and kicking them out of a job.”

(Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, visiting Clapham on Tuesday 9^th August 2011; reported in national press and video link on BBC 2 Newsnight, Friday 12^th August)¹

In some quarters the Mayor of London’s recent dismissal of ‘sociological justifications’ of the July 2011 riots in Britain was taken as a slight aimed at an academic discipline as much as an ascent of the moral high ground. But as a well known classicist Johnson would be aware that his conflation of knowledge production (the epistemological) and morality (the ethical) had a longer, though no less troubled provenance. The Greek aitia (αἰτία) conflated both cause and reason; the term that etymologically gives us the medical mapping disciplines of aetiology appealed to both a sense of determination of the action alongside a notion of moral reason or justification.

But Johnson will also be aware of the enlightenment traditions that appealed to reason in a different way; that attempted to use observation, scrutiny, and analysis to make sense of phenomena that were at first sight perplexing as well as disturbing. Such thinking dwelt on how events, patterns and trends came about in some places and not others, at this time and not at that time. In short how a notion of causality might help us make sense of the world.

And if we turn to Aristotle, another figure of classical thought familiar to Johnson, we might understand at least the questions that we might begin rationally to ask about recent events in British cities. For Aristotle, we should understand the separation of material, formal, final and efficient causality through the metaphor of the sculptor. The marble provided the material (the material cause) out of which the figure was hewn. The template provided the formal guide to the work of the sculptor; the pick or axe the efficient action of iron on stone and the telos of the object, its final causality, was the sculpture envisioned by the artist or artisan.

So unlike the parade of pundits who have (like Nothrop Frye’s determinist critic) placed what interests them most (gangs, rap, unemployment, moral fibre, race, migration) into a causal relationship with what interests them least (the riots) we might instead find a proper place for academic scholarship. Scholarship that makes comprehensible the milieux and the habitus; the social context in which the social order is so fragile that the actions of recent weeks are possible. We might ask about the riots’ chronology, their choreography, their formal appearance on some estates and not others, in some cities first and others later. We might also ask about the sequence of events in Tottenham and the cast list of individuals involved both now and over the last three decades in that part of London, and we might finally ask just how we went from a protest outside a police station to nation wide mayhem. All of these questions demand evidence as well as analysis, empirical endeavour and abstract reason, work that we might understand as sociological research.

Such scholarship (after Kant rather than Aristotle) might be marked by both ethics and epistemology. In such scholarship, we might appeal to and develop a sociological imagination that links private troubles and public issues. But such a recognition of ethical dilemmas does not mean that to know all is to forgive all. Indeed the very discipline of sociological investigation might be demanded to understand the aetiology of the rioting; to make even skeletal sense of recent events, their prehistory in the riotous tradition of the British Isles, the colonial legacies that haunt the 21^st century cities of the United Kingdom and the present day’s ostentatiously fragile social order.

In short, things can look a little fuzzy from the rarefied heights of the moral high ground. Maybe some high quality sociological research could make the landscape below just slightly more comprehensible if we are plausibly to explain as well as to condemn the events in British cities this month.

Michael Keith is Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford.  He is the author of – among other things – ‘ Race, riots and policing – Lore and disorder in a multiracist society’ (1993)

¹http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013h14z/Newsnight_12_08_2011/, 10.20, accessed 14^th August 2011.