Riots Of Summer Research Articles

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? Hoodies in Contemporary British Horror Cinema

The late 2000s and early 2010s saw the rise of a new subgenre in British horror cinema now often referred to as hoodie horror. Government and media campaigns against antisocial behaviour or Broken Britain under Blair and Cameron’s premierships undoubtedly helped revive the stereotype of a rebellious and dangerous youth, also a great cinematic trope, which culminated with the summer riots of 2011. The enemy image of the hoodie thus gelled on and off screen around the powerful symbol of that garment. Because of the possibilities offered by genre films, the often claimed “feral” nature of these creatures is sometimes taken in a literal sense and young people from sink estates are presented as amoral and bloodthirsty monsters causing the general collapse of society. These gangs of predators appear to be fascinated by their own evil image that they proudly advertise through the use of social media. Hoodies are thus othered, but they also ironically reclaim that enemy image. Hoodie horror has sometimes been criticised because of its perceived conservative or even reactionary and/or racist overtones. Allegedly feeding on and fuelling moral panic, it may perpetuate clichés about a so-called new underclass, thereby further blurring the thin boundary between reality and fantasy for spectators. As a by-product of neoliberalism, it is deemed to depoliticise or deny the wider social context in order to better essentialise evil through the construction of a new folk devil. To a certain extent, this cycle of films does reinforce the horrific character of poor British youths, presenting them not only as culturally but also biologically different. However, this interpretation has to be mitigated. Many of these films play with the conventions of a subgenre inspired by several American models in order to somehow subvert and question the enemy image given to hoodies as they implicitly point to the society that generates, to better demonise, these new evil hordes. By putting the media and their effects into perspective, by looking at the other side i.e. the victims of hoodies (Middle England, “us”, spectators) and questioning their own values and attitudes, these films finally advocate sotto voce a discourse that is quite pessimistic but not as cynical and hostile towards these youths as expected. The worst enemy of the nation may be the excommunicators.

Exploring the punitive surge: Crown Court sentencing practices before and after the 2011 English riots

The English summer riots of 2011 resulted in the criminal justice system having to process an unprecedented number of offenders in a short timeframe. This study explores sentencing practice in the wake of the riots using the 2011 Crown Court Sentencing Survey. A multilevel model was implemented to specify the probability of receiving a custodial sentence for offences of commercial burglary. This model allows exploring differences in sentencing before and after the riots. An increased probability of receiving a custodial sentence in the post-riot period was identified. An increase in variability was also detected, changing from a state of almost perfect consistency to one in which substantial variation was observed between courts. Custodial rates for burglary increased to a level associated with more serious offences, thereby undermining the principle of proportionality. This, as well as the increased dispersion between courts, challenges other principles such as legal certainty and transparency.

The English Riots of Summer 2011

The aim of the paper is to analyse the English riots of summer 2011 and reflect on the questions of race and ethnicity – will they add significantly to our understanding of these events? The paper presents the timeline of social unrest, its dominant actors and events (starting from the manifestation organized by Mark Duggan’s family and friends), as well as the main theoretical themes and analytical perspectives present in British debate on the riots. The author argues that while the ethnocultural perspective cannot be seen as a leading one, in order to properly understand the events of August 2011 the links to previous riots and the history of racial tensions between police and members of certain communities should be unfolded and explored.

Understanding the riots

To make sense of last summer's riots it is important to put them in historical perspective. A comparison with the 1981 riots in Brixton, Liverpool and elsewhere and with the 2001 riots in Bradford ...

How members of the public account for the England Riots of summer 2011

The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the general public viewed the England riots of 2011 in order to gain a fuller understanding of the riots and their impact on society. The study involved the thematic analysis of four semi-structured focus groups that were conducted with a total of eighteen participants from differing backgrounds. The analysis identified five themes: how participants draw on traditional theories of the crowd; the Police were deemed to be ‘damned if they do and damned if they don’t’; opportunism was used to account for looting; the media were viewed as aiding the spread of the riots but also as informative and as aiding the cleanup after the riots ended; and the riots were presented as being understandable, but in no way acceptable. This demonstrates how public understanding of the riots differs from the psychological literature. Practical recommendations are suggested including the need to give a platform to crowd psychologists.

Education and the reconstitution of social class in England

This paper extends the work of Gamble, who followed Marx in seeing a reconstitution of the reserve army of labour as a key function of capitalist crisis, but it suggests a wider class reformation that includes what can be called the middle-working / working-middle class. Education and training to all levels are deeply implicated in this class reformation, not only by relegating an unskilled section of the previously manually working class to worthless vocational certification at one end, but in cramming for academic qualifications to ‘restart social mobility’ at the other. The riots of summer 2011 are seen as a crystallisation of this new class formation, which goes further than during economic crisis in the 1970s manifested in what Finn called ‘training without jobs’ to be succeeded by what Ainley and Allen called ‘education without jobs’. Delusionary efforts to ‘educate our way out of economic crisis’ are questioned in relation to ‘education’s credibility crunch’ since there is no ‘new correspondence’ between education and the economy so that the main remaining ‘function’ of institutionalised education and training is increasingly one of social control. Education must therefore regain its purpose of critically learning from the past to meet the crisis of the present.

Running up a Down-Escalator in the Middle of a Class Structure Gone Pear-Shaped

Whilst widening participation to higher education was approaching New Labour's target of 50% of 18-30s (for women at least), it was presented as a professionalisation of the proletariat but in reality and in hindsight it can be seen to have disguised a proletarianisation of the professions - for which HE supposedly prepares its graduates - with many reduced to para-professions at best. It is argued therefore that education as a whole faces a credibility crunch. However, many have nowhere else to go since without qualifications they face falling into the so-called ‘underclass’ which was widely seen to have manifested itself in the riots of summer 2011. Like other commentators, we point out that the majority of youth did not riot and focus instead upon the children of the new working-middle class who are running up a down-escalator of devalued qualifications. This only intensifies national hysteria about education as the Coalition's reception of Browne's Review restricts competitive academic HE entry to those who can afford tripled fees, while relegating those who cannot to ‘Apprenticeships Without Jobs’ (cf. Finn 1987 ) in FE and private providers. With reference to Allen and Ainley (2011) , this paper speculates as to the likely outcome of this generational crisis.

TWITTER AS A REPORTING TOOL FOR BREAKING NEWS

This study focuses on journalists Paul Lewis (The Guardian) and Ravi Somaiya (The New York Times), the most frequently mentioned national and international journalists on Twitter during the 2011 UK summer riots. Both actively tweeted throughout the four-day riot period and this article highlights how they used Twitter as a reporting tool. It discusses a series of Twitter conventions in detail, including the use of links, the taking and sharing of images, the sharing of mainstream media content and the use of hashtags. The article offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying Twitter, reflecting critically on commonly used data collection strategies, offering possible alternatives as well as highlighting the possibilities for combining different methodological approaches. Finally, the article makes a series of suggestions for further research into the use of Twitter by professional journalists.

Black Liberation Theology and the Lynching of Jesus

Black Liberation Theology and the Lynching of Jesus

The ‘Modernity’ of Medieval Popular Revolt

AbstractThis essay argues that late medieval European popular protest fails to fit the pattern of ‘pre‐modern’ revolts in models devised by historians and social scientists over the past 50 years. By their criteria late medieval in fact appear more ‘modern’ than those of the early modern period and even those of the 21st century as seen with the English summer riots of 2011 and the ‘Arab Spring’. Late medieval revolts differed from the 21st century ones in three cardinal respects: (1) unlike the English riots that flared more or less spontaneously, drawn together by instantaneous social networking, late medieval ones relied on planning, assemblies, fraternities, elections of leaders, and negotiation; (2) the present intertwining of religious dogma with struggles for social and economic justice seen in the Arab Spring, was largely absent from revolts of the later Middle Ages; even strife between English burgesses and the Church focused on concrete economic and political rights without resort to religious language or ideology; and (3) unlike the mass brutality and repression seen today in Syria, such massacres of the innocents were rare in the later Middle Ages. Instead, a large proportion of late medieval revolts succeeded.

Seeing Red: Entropy, Property, and Resistance in the Summer Riots 2011

This paper explores the thermodynamic property 'entropy' as a metaphor for aesthetics and politics, law and resistance in the case of the Summer Riots 2011. The aim of the paper is to use the framework and structure of entropy to demonstrate a political aesthetics of property. This shall be done by firstly linking entropy with aesthetic concepts of order, disorder, symmetry and equilibrium. Works on complex adaptive systems to account for collective behaviour, combined with Benjaminian and Adornian accounts of the commodity, shall be used alongside the relevance of crowd theory in explaining not the riots themselves but the sentencing of collectivity in the case of R v Blackshaw & Others [2011] EWCA Crim 2312. Following Ranciere and the arts and crafts movement, utility and beauty, the breaking down of the divisions of art, life, philosophy and science are summarized as the lesson of entropy for law. This re-visiting of the Summer Riots 2011 hopes to re-evaluate the sentencing procedures in light of 'Riot-Related Offending' through an aesthetic politics of collectivity, property and commodity.

The 2011 Summer Riots: Learning from History -Remembering ‘81

Arguments that have emphasised the apparent meaninglessness and mindlessness of the 2011 riots rest on a number of assumptions and assertions. This includes for example the claim that such riots were fundamentally different on a number of levels compared to those of the past and particularly in relation to those of the 1980s. Whilst the latter have been viewed more sympathetically, with meanings and grievances now largely understood and accepted, and even seen as noble, the 2011 disturbances have been seen as lacking any real or legitimate grievances. By contradicting claims about the uniqueness of the recent riots (whilst also acknowledging important differences), it is possible to challenge assertions that firstly, the rioters did not have genuine grievances and secondly, that they should not be listened to. By examining the (qualified) similarities and continuities between riots past and present, we argue the case that it is likely that deep-seated grievances lay behind the 2011 riots that demands serious public and political engagement. Such perspective needs to stand in place of the dismissal that politicians were quick to offer, alongside their many instant diagnoses of the rioters’ conditions and the social evils they represent. The qualitative differences that do exist between the urban unrest of 1981 and the 2011 English riots reflect the historical specificities’ of these periods and the immediate material conditions within which each are grounded.

Seeing Red: Entropy, Property, and Resistance in the Summer Riots 2011

This paper explores the thermodynamic property 'entropy' as a metaphor for aesthetics and politics, law and resistance in the case of the Summer Riots 2011. The aim of the paper is to use the framework and structure of entropy to demonstrate a political aesthetics of property. This shall be done by firstly linking entropy with aesthetic concepts of order, disorder, symmetry and equilibrium. Works on complex adaptive systems to account for collective behaviour, combined with Benjaminian and Adornian accounts of the commodity, shall be used alongside the relevance of crowd theory in explaining not the riots themselves but the sentencing of collectivity in the case of R v Blackshaw & Others [2011] EWCA Crim 2312. Following Ranciere and the arts and crafts movement, utility and beauty, the breaking down of the divisions of art, life, philosophy and science are summarized as the lesson of entropy for law. This re-visiting of the Summer Riots 2011 hopes to re-evaluate the sentencing procedures in light of 'Riot-Related Offending' through an aesthetic politics of collectivity, property and commodity.

They can’t do nothin’ to us today

Just as with the riots of 1981, the riots of summer 2012 will play a key role in the reshaping of British society. Most analyses frame these events as pathologies of the poor or as contemporary expressions of Mertonian anomie. Drawing on the work of Randall Collins, this article explores the riot as a form of collective action, considers the role of looting and arson within it, and the extent to which the actors involved find themselves part of multiple logics that mutually undermine each other. The analysis highlights the importance of the embodied, mobile, temporal and visual dimensions of the riot, and argues that the social sciences need to develop conceptual tools and methods to both engage with such embodied events and to be part of the social debate about their meaning.

Understanding the riots

To make sense of last summer's riots it is important to put them in historical perspective. A comparison with the 1981 riots in Brixton, Liverpool and elsewhere and with the 2001 riots in Bradford ...

Policing the riots: from Bristol and Brixton to Tottenham, via Toxteth, Handsworth, etc

The most surprising thing about this summer's riots was the surprise that greeted them; as if we had not seen their like before. If not actually hypocritical, such surprise is disingenuous. Once po...

A Case for Regional Negotiations

It would appear that after the initial cacophony that existed during the first few years of operating under the provisions of this law, school boards and teachers have adopted a fatalistic attitude toward the process of collective negotiations. It is the same type of attitude exhibited by the American people toward summer riots, student unrest, and the income tax. It is a way of life. But as school boards and teachers' associ-

Report Analysis: National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders

The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, initiated by the President after the riots of Summer, 1967, received sustained national attention for its condemnation of white racism as the root cause of civil disorder and for its broad recommendations for government action, including action in the field of education. The Report deserves analysis both as a research document analyzing social processes underlying the present urban crisis, and as a political document recommending programs for change. Richard J. Light,Instructor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, concentrates on the Report's empirical studies, using them as a basis for analyzing the relationship between research and public policy. The initial section of Mr. Light's essay provides a brief summary of the Report. Robert L. Green, Professor of Educational Psychology at Michigan State University, focuses his attention on the Report's policy recommendations, especially those dealing with education.