Abstract
The close study of any major riot will inevitably uncover a number of contradictory properties that do not lend themselves to easy or unequivocal explanation. Intensive academic scrutiny and analysis of the ‘long hot summers’ of rioting in the USA in the mid- to late 1960s revealed that there was not only a consistently logical pattern to the selection of the many targets of the violence, looting, and property destruction occurring in the hundreds of cities involved, but also recurring feelings of camaraderie, jubilation, empowerment, pride, and a sense of accomplishment coexisted with the anger and fear described by riot participants. Similar emotions were subsequently reported by those involved in the UK riots of the early and mid-1980s. Any credible explanation of rioting must therefore be capable of accounting not only for the underlying logic (or rationality) of such behaviour, but also its characteristically spontaneous, emotional, and invariably destructive nature.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971).
- 2.
See, for example, George Greaves, ‘The Brixton Disorders’, in J. Benyon (ed.), Scarman and After: Essays Reflecting on Lord Scarman’s Report, the Riots and their Aftermath (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1884), pp. 63–72; and Stephen D. Reicher, ‘The St Paul’s Riot: An Explanation of the Limits of Crowd Action in Terms of a Social Identity Model’, European Journal of Social Psychology (1984), Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 1–21.
- 3.
See Stephen D. Reicher, ‘Crowd behaviour as social action’, in J.C. Turner, M.A. Hogg, P.J. Oakes, S.D. Reicher and M.S. Wetherell, Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); and David Waddington, Contemporary Issues in Public Disorder: A Comparative and Historical Approach (London: Routledge, 1992).
- 4.
See James R. Hundley, ‘The dynamics of recent ghetto riots’, Detroit Journal of Urban Law (1968), Vol. 45, pp. 627–639. Reprinted in R.R. Evans (ed.), Readings in Collective Behavior, (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1975); Stanley Lieberson and Arnold R. Silverman, ‘The precipitants and underlying conditions of race riots’, American Sociological Review (1965), Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 887–898; Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963); and John P. Spiegel, ‘Hostility, aggression and violence’, in A.D. Grimshaw (ed.), Racial Violence in the United States (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Co, 1969), pp. 331–339.
- 5.
Peter B. Owens, ‘Precipitating Events and Flashpoints’, in D. A. Snow, D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans and D. McAdam (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2013), p. 1004.
- 6.
See David Waddington, Karen Jones and Chas Critcher, ‘Flashpoints of Public Disorder’, in G. Gaskell and R. Benewick (eds.), The Crowd in Contemporary Britain (London: Sage, 1987), pp. 155–189; and David Waddington, Karen Jones and Chas Critcher, Flashpoints: Studies in Public Disorder (London and New York: Routledge, 1989).
- 7.
Waddington et al., ‘Flashpoints of Public Disorder’, p. 159.
- 8.
Waddington et al., Flashpoints: Studies in Public Disorder, p. 22.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 167.
- 10.
For criticisms see Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussain, Riotous Citizens: Ethnic Conflict in Multicultural Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Michael Keith, Race, Riots and Policing (London: UCL Press, 1993); M. H. P. Otten, Arjen Boin and E. J. Van der Torre, Dynamics of Disorder: Lessons from Two Dutch Riots, Crisis Research Centre, Leiden University, The Hague, 2001; and publications by PAJ Waddington including Liberty and Order: Public Order Policing in a Capital City (London: UCL Press, 1994); and ‘Policing public order and political contention’, in T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2003). These criticisms have been addressed by Waddington in a number of publications including Contemporary Issues in Public Disorder; ‘Waddington versus Waddington: Public Order Theory on Trial’, Theoretical Criminology (1998), Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 373–394; Policing Public Disorder: Theory and Practice (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2007); and ‘Applying the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder to the 2001 Bradford riot’, British Journal of Criminology (2010), Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 342–59.
- 11.
For related theoretical developments on public order policing see relevant chapters in PAJ Waddington, ‘Controlling protest in contemporary historical and comparative perspective’, in Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter (eds.), Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). On the expanded flashpoints model see Mike King and David Waddington, ‘Flashpoints revisited: a critical application to the policing of anti-global protest’, Policing and Society (2005), Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 255–82; and subsequent publications by Waddington including ‘Applying the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder to the 2001 Bradford riot’; ‘Policing the British G8 Protests: A Contextualized Analysis’, in J. Knuttson and T. Madensen (eds.), Preventing crowd violence (Boulder, Co., Lynne Rienner, 2011), pp. 95–114.; and ‘A “kinder blue”: Analysing the Police Management of the Sheffield Anti-‘Lib Dem’ Protest of March 2011’, Policing and Society (2013), Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 46–64.
- 12.
Waddington et al. Flashpoints: Studies in Public Disorder, p. 161.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 162.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 162.
- 15.
Waddington et al. Flashpoints: Studies in Public Disorder, p. 166.
- 16.
Waddington, ‘Applying the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder to the 2001 Bradford riot’, p. 346.
- 17.
See King and Waddington, ‘Flashpoints revisited’; and Waddington, Policing Public Disorder: Theory and Practice. These formed a response to observations by Otten et al., Dynamics of Disorder: Lessons from Two Dutch Riots; and PAJ Waddington’s arguments in Liberty and Order: Public Order Policing in a Capital City; and ‘Policing public order and political contention’.
- 18.
Waddington, Policing Public Disorder: Theory and Practice, p. 52.
- 19.
See Otten et al., Dynamics of Disorder: Lessons from Two Dutch Riots.
- 20.
See Waddington, ‘Applying the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder to the 2001 Bradford riot’; and ‘A “kinder blue”: Analysing the Police Management of the Sheffield Anti-‘Lib Dem’ Protest of March 2011’.
- 21.
Harry Angel, ‘Viewpoint: Were the riots political?’ Safer Communities (2012), Vol. 11, No. 1, p. 25.
- 22.
Sophie Body-Gendrot. ‘Urban violence in France and England: comparing Paris (2005) and London (2011)’, Policing and Society (2013), Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 6.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 12.
- 24.
Ferdinand Sutterlüty, ‘The hidden morale of the 2005 French and 2011 English riots’, Thesis Eleven (2014), Vol. 12, No. 1, p. 43.
- 25.
Cathy L. Schneider, Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 13–18.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 27.
Tim Newburn, ‘The 2011 England Riots in Recent Historical Perspective’, British Journal of Criminology (2015), Vol. 55, No. 1, p. 48.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 49.
- 30.
Ibid., pp. 49–50.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 49.
- 32.
Loukia Kotronaki and Seraphim Seferiades, ‘Along the Pathways of Rage: the Space-Time of an Uprising’, in S. Seferiades and H. Johnston (eds.), Violent Protest, Contentious Politics, and the Neoliberal State (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 157–170; and Sadiya Akram, ‘Recognizing the 2011 United Kingdom riots as political protest: A theoretical framework based on Agency, Habitus and Preconscious’, British Journal of Criminology (2014), Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 375–392.
- 33.
Kotronaki and Seferiades, ‘Along the Pathways of Rage’, p. 158.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Akram, ‘Recognizing the 2011 United Kingdom riots as political protest, p. 384.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 383.
- 37.
Kotronaki and Seferiades, ‘Along the Pathways of Rage’, p. 159.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 159.
- 39.
Marilena Simiti, ‘The volatility of urban riots’, in S. Seferiades and H. Johnston (eds.), Violent Protest, Contentious Politics and the Neoliberal State (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 133–147.
- 40.
Kotronaki and Seferiades, ‘Along the Pathways of Rage’, p. 161.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 162.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 162–163.
- 43.
Stephanie Baker, ‘The Mediated Crowd: New Social media and new forms of rioting’, Sociological Review Online (2011), Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 1–21.
- 44.
Joseph De Rivera ‘Emotional climate: social structure and emotional dynamics’, International Review of Studies on Emotion (1992), Vol. 2, p. 197.
- 45.
Simiti, ‘The volatility of urban riots’.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 145.
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Moran, M., Waddington, D. (2016). The Revised Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder. In: Riots. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57131-1_2
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