Widespread Rioting Research Articles

An apolitical risk assessment of the 2024 US elections: The threat of widespread riots and significant business disruption

Civil disorder has always plagued humanity, with violence being triggered by real or perceived grievances, rumours and speculation, and internal or external agitators. The risk to people, communities, businesses and the rule of law is not isolated to a particular country or society. The propensity for violence and how it is incited is, however, an evolving threat with the advent of the ‘modern riot’. The causes of violence centre on economic and social injustice, sports- and event-related riots, a reaction to police or security forces and political unrest. As the US nears the contentious 2024 elections, the failing trust in the three branches of government combined with external global tensions and conflict, threats from domestic extremist groups, a rising acceptance of violence as a means of settling political disagreements, hostile nation actors and international terror groups that exploit societal instability create fertile conditions for widespread violence. Exacerbating these factors are the risks from artificial intelligence (AI) deepfake, rapid mass communications, the citizen journalist, prominent influencers amplifying grievances and inflammatory media reporting. This convergence of exacerbators and accelerants for political discord offers the potential for serious security risks and significant business disruption.

Participant accounts of police violence during black lives matter protests in Chicago

ABSTRACT Black protest events in the United States have been characterised by police use of violence against protestors during periods, such as the widespread riots of the 1960s, when many white people and police see black people as posing a special danger to the status quo. It appears that the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, which triggered widespread Black Lives Matter protests, is another such time. However, social scientific evidence that addresses the question of whether police responded with unnecessary violence to these black-led protests remains in short supply. In this study, we conducted a content analysis of protest participants’ federal court statements about their lived experience with police violence during Chicago, IL, protests. Their accounts suggest that police, rather than protestors, initiated violence and relied on it to control protestors in ways that violated Chicago Police Department policies and constitutional protections afforded citizens. Despite efforts to reform police management of protests over the last half century, our findings suggest that the historical pattern of police use of militaristic tactics and gratuitous violence to control black protest events persists today. We consider the implications of the findings for relations between the police and black communities.

Citizenship education in Chile: Curricular orientations and teachers' beliefs in a context of political crisis and social mobilization

AbstractOver the last decade in the context of collapsing trust in major public and private institutions, Chilean society has engaged in massive social mobilizations culminating in 2019 with widespread rioting in rebellion against the neoliberal model. This socio‐political crisis raises the general question which this article addresses: How does such a fluid political, highly mobilized, and polarized social context influence school citizenship education? Focusing on features of curriculum and teacher‐held beliefs regarding democratic principles and forms of political participation, a mixed‐methods approach produces evidence which makes visible a consistent pattern of influence. First, we find evidence of an orientation in the curriculum towards critical active citizenship with a parallel silencing of key democratic processes and skills, like voting and deliberation. Second, we reveal a complex and ambivalent set of beliefs among teachers which combine both community and contentious—even illegal—forms of political participation, on the one hand, and formal political participation through voting as key, on the other.

Reforming fossil fuel subsidies requires a new approach to setting international commitments

Reforming fossil fuel subsidies requires a new approach to setting international commitments

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. By Didier Fassin. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. 320 pp. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. By Didier Fassin. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. 320 pp. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.This fascinating book examines the punitive French police practices that triggered widespread rioting in French cities in 2005. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the time of those rebellions, the analysis reveals how police officers justified their practices and why the people subjected these practices so deeply resented them. The analysis has wide relevance beyond the French context.The author focuses on particular situations, a concept similar in some ways the police-civilian encounter that is the subject of many U.S. studies, but with special attention participants' understanding of is it that's going on here? (p. 148, quoting Goffman). What is going on is intense, ongoing stopping, identity checking, and frisking. Fassin shows that the meaning of these practices amounts deliberate humiliation of young racial minority men that is justified by an understanding of these targets as a foreign and dangerous element. This ongoing humiliation serves enforce these youths' subordination in a hierarchical social order.The police studied by Fassin are mainly young working class white men from small towns assigned the poor racial minority banlieues (suburbs). From politicians' rhetoric and police training they learn that they must use extraordinary measures bring order an alien jungle rife with violent crime. Their official insignias express this targeting: one is a rifle-scope cross-hairs centered on a high-rise public housing project. Ironically, rates of violent crime are down in France as in other industrialized countries, and so the French anticrime squads patrol in boredom, waiting long hours for the rare emergency call. Lacking the need respond crime, they make proactive stops ostensibly aimed at preventing it. They target young men, singly or in groups, demand identity papers and make frisks. Needing make arrests show that they are doing their job, they arrest for trivial offenses. Often these arrests seem remarkably perverse: the adolescent boy sitting with friends on his apartment's stoop, arrested for failing bring his identity papers that he says he can retrieve from his apartment if only allowed do this, or the young man arrested for responding a provocation deliberately aimed at achieving this result.Although the police occasionally beat people, Fassin observes that the meaning of violence extends deeper and beyond the physical act. It takes the form of what he calls moral violence, or the deliberate, almost sadistic humiliation, both of those physically beaten and those who, while not touched, are cruelly degraded. In nearly every stop the police cast insults, often pushing the point painfully and deeply, to institute a relationship of abasement and mortification (p. …

The Enforcement of Immigration Control in Colonial Korea and the Rise of Nationalism in the Chinese Media

This paper investigates how conflicts and tension built up between Chinese migrant workers and Korean residents in colonial Korea (1910-1945). This led up to the enforcement of immigration controls by the Japanese authorities and also to a change of the image of Koreans in the Chinese media. The Japanese government adopted a policy to ban Chinese laborers from mainland Japan. This policy implied also, that, by contrast, the Government General of Korea should accommodate Chinese laborers to some extent, as long as the Chinese government accepted Korean people to inhabit and cultivate Manchuria. However, the competition between Chinese and Korean laborers became stronger and the Korean resentment against Chinese wealth in Korea also deepened the emotional gap between the Koreans and the Chinese as time passed. Along with these factors, the Korean nationalistic judgment, that the Chinese authorities oppressed Korean tenant farmers in Manchuria led to the first widespread anti-Chinese riots in Korea in 1927. Furthermore, the Wanbaoshan Incident in 1931 ignited Koreans’ anti-Chinese sentiment, which resulted in bloody ethnic riots and the killing of over 100 Chinese immigrants in Korea. Subsequently Chinese perceptions changed dramatically from Koreans as oppressed victims of Japanese imperialism to their collaborators. The subsequent Mukden Incident cemented this image decisively. However, the anti-Chinese riot not only was ignited by the nationalistic sentiment agitated over Chinese oppression in Manchuria, but also stemmed from long-lasting ethnic discord in colonial Korea. (This article is in English.)

Do Dietary Changes Increase the Propensity of Food Riots? An Exploratory Study of Changing Consumption Patterns and the Inclination to Engage in Food-Related Protests

Following widespread food riots in 2008, many people argued that high food prices cause political instability and civil unrest in the form of food riots. However, subsequent research has demonstrated that political, cultural, and economic factors confound the impact of price in determining whether a food riot occurs. This paper contributes to this growing body of literature by exploring: (1) the relationship between household demographic characteristics and reported intent to riot due to future food price rises; and (2) the relationships between people’s diets and their reported intent to riot due to future food price rises. We hypothesize that local context, including demographic factors and dietary patterns, combine to predispose some groups of people to riot when food prices rise. This hypothesis is tested using household surveys (N = 300) and three focus groups discussions (N = 65) carried out in three cities in the Central African nation of Cameroon that experienced widespread food riots in 2008. Results show that some 70% of the respondents would riot if food prices went up. Also, in the event of food price rises: (1) households in Cameroon’s major cities are more likely to riot than the citizens of smaller cities; (2) Households with relatively higher educational level, high incomes, are less likely to riot. Finally, the relationship between dietary patterns and propensity to riot is not straightforward as changes in consumption of different food groups influence propensity to riot in different ways. Overall, this paper demonstrates that preemptive strategies designed to avoid future food riots in Cameroon must take into consideration these spatial, demographic, and dietary factors.

The 1938–1939 Moyne Commission in Barbados: investigating the status of children

While the process of reform which took place in the British West Indies following widespread riots in the 1930s was clearly set in motion by the anti-colonial class struggle against authoritarian plantocratic regimes, it was ultimately mediated, muted, and mandated by the investigations and recommendations of the Royal Commission of Enquiry dispatched by the Colonial Office in the wake of the rebellion. In this paper, I focus on the intense inquiry into the status of children and young persons (with respect to family, health, education, employment, the penal system, and public welfare) conducted by the commissioners, specifically on the island of Barbados. I examine the commission's two week-long hearings as a site of negotiation, often contentious, among both Colonial Office-appointed and local reformers, local plantocratic elites, and (as a decidedly minority voice) local anti-colonial nationalist forces. The recordings of the commissioners’ meetings with various groups, indicating both the direction of their questions and the answers they received (along with their own comments and repartees), offer an insight into the process by which reform was ultimately shaped and managed in Barbados and elsewhere, connecting the British West Indies to a more global liberal-imperial reform and restructuring project. The commissioners, acting as authoritative transatlantic vectors of liberal imperialism, took aim at both the oligarchy and the dysfunctional culture of the laboring classes. The focus on Barbados yields particularly rich insights because of its British West Indian profile of a “double-edged exceptionalism” – with a system that was at once the most punitive and the most extensive provider of schooling with regard to children. I use the context of the Moyne Commission inquiry to examine both the historical record of the treatment of children and youth by the Barbadian state and the “managed” negotiation of reform under the stewardship of authorities of British liberal imperialism.

Contours of an Interaction Sequence in Rioting: The Gothenburg Disturbances of 2009

This article examines a series of public disturbances in Gothenburg, Sweden. Drawing on recent work in micro-sociology, public order theory, and imitation studies, it considers why and how the ‘travelling’ of violence could develop among the city's street gangs as dramatically as it did, resulting in widespread rioting, vandalism, and arson. The situational dynamics behind the unfolding sequence of events are explored, using police intelligence records, interviews, and court documents as primary data sources. A five-part interaction sequence is outlined, focusing on the role of flash-point events, hostile belief systems, moral holidays, spirals of opinion, and mimetic rivalry in the escalation of the unrest.

Neutrons and food: barriers and opportunities

When being introduced to a stranger and the inevitable question arises as to one's profession, most of us have a concise two sentence description for neutron scattering. That's largely because we fear that we may lose the poor, unsuspecting soul on uttering the third sentence. Since we initiated the “Food Science” program at ANSTO in 2006 [1], my revised description has almost always resulted in increased interest by the listener. I conclude that this is because ‘food’ is an area with which the public are intimately familiar and with perhaps an inherently greater understanding of its significance. The subject of food is certainly newsworthy; whether the story is associated with ‘food security’ – although the term (availability of sufficient food or bioterrorism) is often only evident from context; the impact of climate change (water, soil conditions); influence of oil prices on food costs (leading to widespread riots in 2007–2008); outbreaks of food poisoning or tampering (adulteration of Chinese milk in 2008); the green economy and energy utilization in food production (including waste); the use of nanotechnology in the food sector; or the development of foods with enhanced nutritional functionality blurring the demarcation between food and medicine (nutraceuticals), the list goes on. While neutron scattering will not address all these issues alone, it is likely that it can, at a minimum, better inform the question and in some cases, have significant impact.

The Pendleton Riot: a political sociology

The incidents that took place in the vicinity of Salford Precinct on the 9 August 2011 occurred prior to and took a quite distinct form from the more widespread rioting and looting two miles away i...

Securitisation from below: the relationship between immigration and foreign policy in South Africa's approach to the Zimbabwe crisis

The political and economic debacle in Zimbabwe has led to a large-scale influx of Zimbabweans into neighbouring South Africa. This article argues that there is a complex and significant link between the domestic response to this immigration influx and South Africa's foreign policy towards Zimbabwe. South Africa's foreign and security policy elite preferred to use an immigration approach of benign neglect as a tool to promote its ‘quiet diplomacy’ approach towards the Zimbabwean regime, treating the influx as a ‘non-problem’. But increased xenophobic violence, vigilantism and protests in townships and informal settlements against Zimbabwean and other African immigrants, culminating in widespread riots across the country in 2008, contributed to a change not only in immigration policy but also in the mediation efforts towards the Zimbabwean parties. I argue that this foreign policy change was pushed by a process of ‘securitisation from below’, where the understanding of Zimbabwean immigrants as a security threat were promoted not by traditional security elites but by South Africa's marginalised urban poor.

Opposing Exclusion: The Political Significance of the Riots in French Suburbs (2005–2007)

In 2005, following the deaths of two teenagers in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, France witnessed three weeks of widespread rioting. These events were mirrored, albeit on a smaller scale, in the nearby suburb of Villiers-le-Bel in 2007 when two local youths died in a collision involving police officers. Both during and after these respective events, many social and political commentators denounced the riots as a purely nihilistic expression of violence, a rejection of the Republic and of French society at large. However, this interpretation fails to fully consider the complexity of the situation. This essay will attempt to deconstruct the security-oriented interpretation of the violence and instead offer an analysis that views the riots of both 2005 and 2007 as a plea for access to French society on the part of those involved. Drawing on empirical fieldwork carried out in Villiers-le-Bel, the article will examine the case of Villiers-le-Bel in relation to the arguments put forward by a number of French sociologists, most notably Lapeyronnie and Kokoreff, which attributed political significance to the riots. The argument will explore the idea of the riots as a protopolitical event, that is, a primitive attempt by a socially excluded population to gain visibility in the public and political spheres.

Rebels with a Cause: (Re)defining Identities and Culture in Contemporary French Cinema

In Fall 2005, widespread riots shook France. Was Paris really burning? What actually did happen in France that fall? If the “social unrest,” as it was called was symptomatic of serious social and political issues in France, it was largely misconstrued in some American media outlets. As a corollary, American students of French at times seem to have an inaccurate perception of the period. All the issues underlying the 2005 riots are at the forefront of today’ French socio-political debate, especially since a central political figure at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, was since elected president. These issues revolve around questions of integration of an increasingly diverse population, social justice, unemployment and poverty. After addressing some of the reasons for the divergence in French and American media discourse, the paper examines in depth France’s contemporary social climate, as portrayed in recent French films, from La Haine to Entre les murs. These films, which represent a fragmented French youth in the midst of redefining its identities, oscillating between revolt and desire for integration in a changing culture, constitute effective entry points to present FL students with contemporary cultural contexts and content. Using the frameworks of multiliteracies and intercultural communicative competence, pedagogical techniques are presented to help guide learners explore difficult, yet critically important topics to improve their understanding of French – and American – culture(s).

Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles (review)

Reviewed by: Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles James Diego Vigil Janet L. Abu-Lughod , Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 360 pp. Building on her earlier book on three cities, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles: America's Global Cities (U. Minnesota Press, 1999), Professor Abu-Lughod goes one step further in the review here by examining the riots that have occurred in these cities. First a brief word about the author's background. Janet L. Abu-Lughod is professor emerita of sociology at Northwestern University and the Graduate School of the New School for Social Research. She has distinguished herself as a major urbanist for several decades. In this new book, she neatly balances the historical facts of each of these cities with a deeply informed interpretation that clearly advances our knowledge of how both large and small riots unfold. Abu-Lughod starts off by citing the Kerner report (U.S. Riot Commission Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder) of 1968 which included this famous statement about the widespread riots: "This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal" (Kerner Report 1968:1). For the remainder of the book, Professor Abu-Lughod goes on to document how tz`his assessment, now forty years old, is still a nagging source of most of our nation's urban disturbances, thus the key words in the title, "Race" and [End Page 515] "Space." In many ways, it's the same old, same old even in the suggested policies to curb uprisings. In addition to addressing this larger issue, Abu Lughod carefully dissects the historical trajectories of the three cities, outlining two riots for each city, making six in all. She does this by underscoring that these riots were "megariots or (almost) major riots" as opposed to minor uprisings. Race relations figure prominently in most of these cases, and the author takes care to define race as a social construct. She also clarifies where other factors enter the analysis, such as the tensions over living space in certain cities. Hers is a welcome interdisciplinary perspective on the subject of "race riots," adding nuances and wrinkles heretofore missed by other observers. The discussion on the three cities is a type of controlled comparison where a limited number of disturbances are recounted in detail with overarching questions driving the analysis. These questions are: 1) what are the changing conditions of race relations over time; 2) how do we explain variations in riots in three distinct cities; and 3) why do city governments reflect different response strategies? She then goes on to state the case of each city. Chicago is the city the author knows best and the book's two chapters covering the "bloody" riot of 1919 and the "Black Uprising" in 1968 are masterful descriptions and analysis of the root causes there. The early urban history is fascinating, rich with evidence and insight. For example, the 1919 riot was triggered by a swimming incident by the lakeshore where a black youth was killed by a rock thrown by a white man. The descriptions of what occurred after is assessed from various angles to provide a well-rounded view, leaving the reader with plenty of facts and evidence to make up his or her mind. As an urbanist, the author is without parallel when she dissects the U.S. federal effort to address the housing needs of the population. While race and socioeconomic issues are important too, the author stresses the significance of space and how the contentions over neighborhood borders eventually solidified a solution: the separation of the white and black races. This battle over space raged as a low-intensity war from the 1950s to the 1960s and erupted into violence and bloodshed with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968. While space and race marked events in Chicago, class and race seemed to reflect the black-white antagonisms and hostilities in New York. However, politics and political wrangling set the tone for the first chapter, the Harlem riots of...

Health services responses to disasters in Mumbai sharing experiences

In mass disaster situations, demands frequently exceed the capacity of personnel and facilities. In the last few years, there has been an increased incidence of civil disasters; the spectrum of possible catastrophes has also dramatically increased as a result of an increasingly technologically sophisticated society. During the last 15 years, varied terrorist activities have become increasingly common as expressions of the opinions of extreme political groups, especially in India. In Mumbai itself, we have witnessed disasters such as widespread riots, terrorist bomb blasts, floods, and fires. There have been other disasters in India, such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, as well as tsunamis Though most of the hospitals in India manage the medical problems associated with these disasters fairly efficiently, an analysis of the situation is presented so that this may form the basis for future planning in disaster preparedness and provide a template for other communities that may want to implement preparedness protocols. We present our experience with disaster management in Mumbai, India. A successful medical response to multi-injury civilian disasters, either natural or man-made, dictates formulation, dissemination, and periodic assessment of a contingency plan to facilitate the triage and treatment of victims of disaster.

How to distinguish between 'business as usual' and 'significant business disruptions' and plan accordingly

This paper seeks to provide an insight into Air New Zealand and how business continuity is managed in an industry with inherent disruptions. The differences between 'business as usual' and 'significant business disruptions' are outlined along with their associated criteria, response and escalation processes. The paper describes why the company incorporates the four 'R's of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act within its BCM framework and how this aids resilience. A case study is provided that details a 'significant disruption' that occurred in November 2006. This event resulted in the total loss of a sales office and cargo shed after unrest in the Kingdom of Tonga escalated to widespread rioting, looting and destruction of their central business district. The lessons from this event have been captured and provide some essential mitigation measures that will assist in future events.

The state of the media in Kosovo

Introduction It is easy to speak about the Kosovo media in derogatory cliches. Kosovo is the only place in Europe deprived of foreign direct investment in the media. Newspaper circulation figures are the lowest on the continent. Radio stations serve as jukeboxes. Commercial television stations excel only in soaps. The public service broadcaster is best known for a gaffe which triggered widespread rioting in 2004. Political interference is rife. Copyright is infringed day and night. Yet, almost unnoticed, over the past few years considerable progress has been made. Most of the framework of legislation, regulation and education has been put in place, and the media have gradually improved. The Kosovo Assembly adopted a commendable civil defamation law, which was recently promulgated by the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral (SRSG), Kosovo's proconsul. This defamation law, which will open the way to revoking the existing criminal code, was the last part of the legal jigsaw. All other media laws had come into force in the previous two years. Kosovo now has a copyright law which meets European standards, as well as a public broadcasting law and a law establishing the broadcast media regulator. And the existing Law on Access to Official Documents has moved closer to proper implementation through an administrative directive. The print media have established a multi-ethnic Press Council, which enforces a code of conduct. An Independent Media Commission has started to regulate the broadcast media. The Kosovo Institute for Communication and Journalism, a centre of journalistic excellence situated on the outskirts of the capital, is running twoyear MA courses in journalism. The Kosovo Media Institute will shortly add to this the vital ingredient of mid-career training. However, a lot remains to be done.

‘The first chapter of 1798’? Restoring a military perspective to the Irish Militia riots of 1793

The riots that followed the introduction in 1793 of a system of raising the newly refounded Irish militia regiments by ballot have attracted the attention of several historians. In more recent years the political importance of the episode has been emphasised, and the riots have been represented as marking a crucial stage in the breakdown of social and political relations within Ireland in the 1790s that eventually resulted in rebellion.This was not the view of Sir Henry McAnally, author of the only complete history of the militia itself, which was written in the 1930s and published in 1949. As befitted the work of a retired civil servant, McAnally’s history was very careful and restrained in its account and analysis of the Militia Act of 1793 and the introduction of the ballot. He did not devote much attention to the operation of the act, regarding the ensuing riots as peripheral to his main focus of interest. Indeed, in comparison to the widespread and serious rioting that accompanied the establishment of the English Militia in 1757, the Irish disturbances appeared to McAnally to be a transient phenomenon, of limited significance. They did not leave ‘in the popular soul any such bitter memories as remained after other episodes in Irish history’. ‘May 1793 is not one of the black months in that story,’ he wrote; ‘it is not the first chapter of 1798.’