After Riots: the need to reform consumer non-society
[The future of the human race]
Ruth Skilbeck
On reflection, I have further points to draw out from the experience I describe in my blog entry UK Riots: "A Punishment for Being Poor"? - life as a young mother on a London council estate. A main one is that, in a way, anyone can find themselves in the situation of being down and out; but that it is only perhaps when you experience this yourself that you can truly empathise with and understand the reality that it is the 'atmosphere' generated by the social system and the lived experience of being constructed as socially disadvantaged that is produced on inner city 'sink' housing estates, that produces social unrest and disorder manifest in anti-social behaviour exemplified in the riots and looting.
And this is an experience of daily living that is imbued with personal and cultural trauma, that in itself leads to disaffection, withdrawal, disconnection and alienation: the qualities that are physically manifest and reflected in the rundown dangerous precincts of the estates themselves, but this is even more a social problem than individual ‘failing’ of bad luck.
The blog entry is based on my own experience, and approached in a first attempt at putting the riots (and my own experience into perspective).
From my own experience of living, as a young mother, in those conditions I found that personal and cultural trauma seems to result from the living in the atmosphere of social disadvantage that is constructed in the system of subsidised housing and benefits. As I said in the blog entry, it is as if there is a price to pay, a penalty for going onto social security benefits and subsidised council housing. The price is a loss of social status that is conferred by the system, and which, it seems, is (currently) existentially impossible to escape whilst one is in that atmosphere. As a young mother, that pressure is intensified.
The 'have-nots' forced into this role feel the affects, the shame and sense of failure of being losers, and this effects how they feel about themselves and society. The class constructions of 'haves' and have-nots' leads to othering. The riots occurred after the announcements of the austerity measures, when services to the poor including youth clubs and libraries were cut back.
To summarise in a Facebook aphorism:
Moral lesson of Consumer Capitalist Society #1. If enough people are denied access to a life they can only see through 'window shopping', they will break the windows and help themselves.
When did it ever happen that a happy fulfilled person created social mayhem and "mindless crime" at least of the publicly visible, violent, performative kind of riots and open looting that broke out en masse in cities across England? It doesn't happen. There is a reason that the riots broke out in Tottenham not Sloane Square. In the words of people involved (on youtube videos) they felt as if they were not being listened too, they had no other way of getting people to hear them...
Although there have been calls from religious leaders and many social commentators in the media for reform at all levels of society, so far the focus has been on severity of punishment as a deterrent.
The immediate response of the British government to the rioters has been to sweep them off the streets and into elongated jail terms. Usual sentencing practices have been lifted.
The danger is that is only the 'effects' are addressed through measures such as rioters being thrown into jail for lengthy sentences, this does not address let alone try to solve the problem of the causes of social unrest, and the personal and cultural trauma attendant on severe social disadvantage.
Poor people who live in council estates are human, and they react as humans (in this case they react, badly, as humans who are disconnected and alienated and angry that they are excluded ). If the social disadvantages, and moral decay of consumer society that offers only false values that create such an atmosphere, are not addressed, and ways not found to engage the current generation of 'lost' and socially excluded young people in England - and other cities around the world- such outbursts of ‘bad behaviour', of anger, rage and fury will no doubt keep on recurring.
This has also occurred after 30 years of ‘post humanism’ when humanism was discredited as a philosophy in universities around the world a move that was extremely conducive to the rise of neo-liberalism and economic rationalism, and the concurrent mass transformation of universities into education businesses.
But it is to conclude that it is in the interests of all in society, including those at the top, to find ways of improving the life opportunities and experiences of those born into less fortunate circumstances, to think broadly and apply socially just policies - that apply to all whether “rich” or “poor”, allowing education, health and cultural participation for all, and for the greater good of all - if not for the survival of humanity and future of our human race.
As I mentioned in my previous blog entries the riots are a response against the false consciousness and values of consumer society, by those who are most at its mercy- and who are its victims (‘poor’ as they have no education or cultural way out of their limited and constricted situation into a more fulfilling experience of life ‘the good life’ as Plato called it through education or cultural identification consumers)
In Facebook conversations at the time of the riots we identified literal and symbolic ‘consumption’ of society and young people, maddened by the insidious cruelty of false values and fake desire, fed by media and advertising:
As Zygmunt Bauman said These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.
Whereas, said Wednesday Kennedy: for many they may be both (people are hungry on every level) ... consumed with hunger and desire on an empty belly hurts)...
Desire can never be satisfied in 'consumer society' because it's a fake desire for meaningless commodities, its designed to be insatiable to keep people wanting more and more and never feeling satisfied.
Now the economic system whose advertising fed the desire for consumer commodities is breaking down, riots are breaking out in the areas where people have struggled to 'keep up' with the world they are fed through media- its those who have 'least' who seem to be targetted more by making people feel insecure and that they can increase their social status by having x brand of sportswear or bling...
And it's the case that the riots have followed the proposed austerity cuts, and that these will cutback and block the ways out that were (seen to be) available to the 'poor' through education... (Libraries are being closed and tuition fees increased, as well as closures of youth clubs etc). It's as if the austerity measures publicly announce the end of 'social mobility' that was touted in the Thatcher era of the so called 'classless society' (which seems like a hollow joke now) which kept people striving for the 'rewards' of consumer society. The ‘urban poor' on council estates bought those values too and strove for consumer goods as signs of social status... now their options are cut off - the dominant ideology of consumerism is revealed as a confidence trick- worked through a betrayal of trust and abuse of power most acutely felt by the 'poor'.
Karen Kennedy: Funny how this war on the poor spans history changes ideologies yet is ubiquitous.
AFTER RIOTS: THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL
References:
Bauman, Zygmunt 2011, The London Riots- On Consumerism Coming Home to Roost: by Zygmunt Bauman, Social Europe Journal.
Hall, Richard 2011, UK riots: To understand is not to condone. Aljazeera. 12 August 2011.
Pessin, Al 2011, Experts Cite Underlying cause for UK Riots. Voice of America. 15 August 2011.
Hutton, Will & Porter Henry, 2011, Our Wounded Nation will not be Healed by Vengeaful Gestures. Observer, 14 August 2011.
Williams, Rowan 2011, Rioting is the Choice of Young People with Nothing to Lose. The Guardian, Mon 5 December 2011.
2011 BBC Darcus Howe interview. Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYPN9jP1Nw.
