ABSTRACT
There has been a long-standing concern with ‘rioting’ in all First World countries, some of which is presented as criminal behaviour by bored and inactive youth, while at other times the political basis of their behaviour has been acknowledged. It is the argument of this chapter that acts termed as ‘riots’ are important political events, and those involved in these acts, ‘the rioters’, are politically motivated actors who deserve to be acknowledged as such. The terms ‘riot’ and ‘rioter’ are value-laden and normatively charged notions, which have been heavily disputed in the literature (Benyon 1987; Farrar 2002; Gilroy 2002; Dikec 2006). The language used in this discussion is important and will be discussed in more detail below, but for the purpose of introducing the subject matter, I will continue to use the terms ‘riot’ and ‘rioter’. The analysis will focus on young people or youth involvement in politics, as they are the key cohorts involved in rioting. It will be argued that existing literature on rioting has struggled to deal with the
complex issue of locating political motivations in acts which are dominated by discussions on racialized criminality, violence, irrationality and spontaneous behaviour. These themes all serve to de-politicize the act of rioting. The chapter will examine trends in the literature on rioting and comment on the general neglect of a discussion of the political motivations of the actors involved. The analysis will be located within the broader context of a discussion on decreasing levels of political participation among young people in politics today, or at least in more traditional and more formal modes of political participation. Starting with the UK, the chapter will begin with a review of existing literature in the field of riots, a body of literature which grew in response to the riots; thus, the analysis will largely be temporal. Next, we will examine the riots in France in 2005 and attempt to show the deeply political nature of these events, despite state and popular discourses, which argued otherwise. The chapter ends by exploring future research agendas in this field and makes a plea to reconcile the more criminological aspects of riots, which are acknowledged, with the need to interpret them politically. First, however, we move to a discussion of terminology.
