{"id":14404,"date":"2012-04-02T09:01:19","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T14:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14404"},"modified":"2012-04-02T09:01:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T14:01:19","slug":"the-august-riots-another-study-that-finds-exactly-what-it-expects-to-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/02\/the-august-riots-another-study-that-finds-exactly-what-it-expects-to-find\/","title":{"rendered":"The August riots: another study that finds exactly what it expects to find"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Davenport<\/a> on the most recent report on the causes of the August riots in Britain:<\/p>\n

\n

Once again, an independent panel, this time set up by the government, rolls out a rehearsed number of \u2018social factors\u2019 to explain away the disturbing events: unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people; \u2018forgotten families\u2019; police harassment and a widespread \u2018culture of materialism\u2019. The panel, which visited 21 communities and interviewed thousands of people affected by the riots, says its wide-ranging recommendations \u2018must be enacted together\u2019 if the risk of further riots is to be reduced. In a conclusion that bizarrely echoes Tony Blair\u2019s time in office, panel chair Darra Singh says that everyone must have a \u2018stake in society\u2019. It makes you wonder why \u2018stakeholder society\u2019 policies didn\u2019t actually work in the first place.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

None of the enquiries have examined the broad cultural changes that have taken place in British society which, more often than not, are institutionalised in English schools and other state agencies. In fact, this is the \u2018social context\u2019 that ought to preoccupy researchers, not the handwrung staples of poverty and unemployment. To approach the riots in this way is not to rehearse \u2018teachers aren\u2019t strict enough\u2019 platitudes. It is to examine the kind of destructive values that have been passed down from the top of society: namely, the fostering of assertive victimhood whereby nobody is expected to be accountable for their own actions. It really is somebody else\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

What every schoolchild learns from an early age is that both emotional hurts and tick-box disadvantages — from minor medical problems to class\/ethnic background — constitute a person\u2019s default status. It is only by placing demands on state providers that these \u2018hurts\u2019 are temporarily assuaged. This is what is meant by a culture of entitlement — victim status has to be recognised and then rewarded by state providers. The higher the perceived victim status, the greater the expectation that somebody else must make provisions or allowances (or even an educational maintenance allowance). In this sense, looting from JD Sports becomes justified, even acceptable, because of the expectations that somebody must pay for a looter\u2019s inflated sense of grievance.<\/p>\n

Indeed, many of August\u2019s looters rolled out a lexicon of \u2018hurts\u2019 in order to justify their destructive, anti-social behaviour. According to this cultural script, social solidarities are entirely alien because young people have been socialised to dwell on their self-esteem above all else. Far from other people or a wider community being a source of support, they are more often seen as a target for all sorts of imaginary grievances. Local shopkeepers and random individuals attacked during the August riots were, in some way, being held responsible for young people\u2019s poverty and lack of employment prospects. As one of the blas\u00e9 looters put it, \u2018we wanted to show the rich that we can do what we want\u2019. If young people have grown up with the belief that they are automatically held back by social disadvantages, often promoted by state agencies themselves, then a local community itself can become a target for retribution. <\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Once again, another report on last August\u2019s riots is an exercise in advocacy research, whereby the research neatly matches already rehearsed conclusions. The government panel\u2019s recommendations, failing to recognise the profound significance of the riots, follow the line of wishful thinking and delusion pursued by radical commentators. Furthermore, the panel\u2019s instinctive elitism simply echoes the radical left\u2019s own distrust of ordinary people. Institutionalising the claim that most people are naturally incapable and useless is what destroyed informal communities in the first place. As the nannying, hectoring tone of the latest report into the riots shows, what could be more morally debilitating and soul-destroying?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Davenport on the most recent report on the causes of the August riots in Britain: Once again, an independent panel, this time set up by the government, rolls out a rehearsed number of \u2018social factors\u2019 to explain away the disturbing events: unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people; \u2018forgotten families\u2019; police harassment and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,28],"tags":[350,322,720,742,504],"class_list":["post-14404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-media","tag-london","tag-nannystate","tag-protest","tag-rioting","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Kk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14406,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14404\/revisions\/14406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}