Accessibility statement

September 2011

Urban Unrest, Social Resentment and Justice

Description:

The recent events in several cities across the UK, and more widely in Europe, have raised fundamental questions about the legitimacy of public programs, the crisis-prone nature of economies and ongoing resentment and anger at social inequality and injustice. Despite frequent political and media pronouncements of organised criminality, grounded examinations of riots in the UK and elsewhere highlight how social inequality, policing practices, the embedding of consumption orientations and feelings of injustice have produced social danger and violence in excluded localities. Nuanced, empirically founded and critical accounts are needed of these events. This conference, organised by CURB, sought to contextualise urban unrest within broader,  structural concerns around economic decline, social injustice and criminal cultures. The cohesion of many, apparently ‘broken’ communities, and their capacity to regain control and promote safety belie on-going anger and resentment at corporate excess, media misconduct and political illegitimacy. The meeting explored these issues in detail and provided a space to debate the broader causes and consequences of these events.

Presentations and podcasts:

If you were unable to attend the event or if you would like to listen to some of the presentations again, a selection of recordings can be found below. When possible, we have included full recordings of the presentations as they were given during the 'Urban Unrest' event. Associated slides can be found alongside the audio recordings in most cases. The files are listed according to the order in which speakers presented during the conference on 22 - 23 September 2011. MP3 files have been compressed in .ZIP format and will need to be extracted upon download completion.

  • TONY JEFFERSON, Keele University - The Riots 2011: Another moral panic or...what?  PDF  MP3
  • DAN BRIGGS, University of East London - What we did when it happened: A timeline analysis of the social disorder in 
London  PDF  MP3
  • SHELDON THOMAS, T.A.G./Helping Hand Trust - The riots from a 'road' perspective  PDF  MP3
  • SUZELLA PALMER, University of Bedfordshire - 'Dutty Babylon' Policing Black communities and the Politics of Resistance  PDF  MP3
  • STEVEN HIRSCHLER, University of York - Riots in Retrospective: Lessons from 1958 and the Powell Era  PDF  MP3
  • DAVID HILL, University of York - Social Media and Urban Unrest  PDF  MP3
  • LAURA NAEGLER, University of Hamburg - The riots of those who should not dare to scream for revolution. Riot spectacle, ritual, and the construction of the apolitical adolescent middle-class rioter in Germany  PDF  MP3
  • SIMON HARDING, Middlesex University - Mindful violence: The role of the Urban Street Gang in the riots in London  PDF  MP3
  • BOB JEFFREY and WILL JACKSON, University of Salford - Pendleton: A Political Sociology  PDF  MP3
  • KAREN EVANS, University of Liverpool - Who Broke Britain? Power, austerity and social reaction  PDF  MP3
  • NICHOLAS PLEACE, University of York - Child Poverty as 'Riot Training'? Contrasting perceptions of parents, frontline workers and child poverty experts in London  PDF  MP3
  • ROWLAND ATKINSON, SIMON PARKER and OLIVER SMITH, University of York - 'These atrocities will be repaid': Urban unrest and the whirlwind to be reaped from political revanchism  PDF  MP3
  • JOHN LEA, University of Brighton; SIMON HALLSWORTH, London Metropolitan University - Riots, citizenship and the crisis of the neoliberal state  PDF  MP3
  • JOE SIM, Liverpool John Moores University
 - The Fish Rots from the Capitalist Head: Riots in the Wasteland of the Free  PDF  MP3
  • SIMON WINLOW, University of York - Observations, themes and comments  PDF  MP3

Related Materials:

'Urban Unrest' Conference - Programme of Events (PDF , 322kb)

Useful Links:

Unrest Pic

Update

'Urban Unrest' conference audio files and slides have been added to this page. Please see below for further details.