Transparency & Visible (Dis)Order Surveillance and the Riots

CLIMATE FUTURES @ MQ

What is this about?

• Complex interplay

– Positive – ORDER?

– Negative – CONTROL?

• Tropes in the Script

– Disorder, Destruction, Criminality

– Information, Observation, Communication

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499 15th August 2011

THE AFTERMATH - STATE ARTICULATIONS

• Rhetoric – The ‘outbreak of mindless criminality’ (Cameron, 2011)

– The riot as an action of the ‘feral underclass’ (Clarke, 2011)

– Blame on gangs and 'troubled families’

• PUNITIVE Responses – Expanded and reviewed police powers

– Fast Track court cases and harsh sentencing

– Benefit Removals, Evictions, Reparations

• PROACTIVE (?) Responses – Riots and Community Victims Panel

– Improved community engagement practices

Increasing the public stake - engagement

A Responsibility to inform?

Birmingham CBD August 2011

Increasing the public stake - engagement

A Responsibility to inform?

Manchester CBD August 2011

FLIKR- Operation Withern

TENSIONS – GOVERNANCE and/or GOVERNMENTALITY?

• COMMUNITY RESILIENCE… the story so far

– Warning and informing to educate

– Public awareness as front-line informants

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE UK. A Community Interest Company (not-for-profit org.)

Our inspiration is the 'Blitz Spirit' born out of World War II and engrained in British culture ever

since; most recently being demonstrated in the clean-up after the 2011 London Riots. This

'Spirit' is thinking ahead to make ourselves ready for what might hit us.

It is the willingness for everyone to look after themselves; to ‘make do’ with what we have got

and to do the best we can in the circumstances, helping our neighbours and anyone in need in

order to get our communities back to ‘normal life’ with each one of us ‘doing our bit’. It is a spirit

of stoic courage, endurance, a sense of ‘community’ and genuine public service.

THE AFTERMATH – Rights without responsibilities?

• CIVIL RIGHTS RESPONSIBILITIES for SOCIAL ORDER

– How to promote socially inclusive and citizen driven responsibility beyond the ‘citizen as informant’?

– Does the personalisation of responsibility improve engagement?

“We’ve got robbery with yobbery and we’ve got kids who are taking the opportunity to go

and steal and they’re covering it up with this kind of political cloak of invisibility. We all have to take responsibility for our actions. The Police have to take responsibility for their actions

but so I think do these young people; whatever their background, whatever their colour, they are responsible for what they are doing”

E. Currie, Newsnight, August 2011