Punishment, protection, and precaution: ‘Project X’ riots and the attitudes towards risk and responsibility in late-modern society

Abstract

In the aftermath of severe and unprecedented riots in a small Dutch town, local inhabitants express a broad and contradictory set of interpretations of what had happened and opinions on who should be held responsible. In order to understand this variety, we reinterpret Ewald’s theory on the transformations in the modern attitude towards risk and responsibility. Instead of distinct historical phases, the three attitudes identified by Ewald are simultaneously at play: punishment of delinquents, protection of victims, and precaution by the authorities. Only by taking all attitudes into account can we explain the variety of interpretations and the following, often contradictory, political responses. My findings also suggest that these three attitudes can be used as a model to make sense of contemporary security policies, which simultaneously emphasise punishment, protection, and precaution.