Reclaiming the everyday: the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots

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Reclaiming the everyday: the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots

Tiratelli, M; (2018) Reclaiming the everyday: the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots. Social Movement Studies , 17 (1) pp. 64-84. 10.1080/14742837.2017.1348942. Green open access

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Abstract

This paper examines the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots. The empirical contribution is to challenge the dominant explanation of the riots as an outbreak of ‘criminal opportunism’. I use the Metropolitan Police record of all riot-related crimes in London to test several hypotheses and show that this ‘criminal opportunism’ theory cannot account for the riots’ spatial patterning. This opens space for alternative explanatory mechanisms. I then use video footage and testimonies of events on the ground to examine the interactions which made up the London Riots. These suggest that the riots were, in part, a way for people to stake a claim to the public spaces in which they lived, to reclaim the everyday. Theoretically, this builds on Randall Collins’s ‘micro-situational’ approach to violence but extends it by embedding historical and structural factors into that micro-perspective. Specifically, the emotional dynamics of these riot interactions cannot be understood without acknowledging participants’ pre-existing expectations of the police and of the everyday places of the riot.

Type:	Article
Title:	Reclaiming the everyday: the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI:	10.1080/14742837.2017.1348942
Publisher version:	http://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2017.1348942
Language:	English
Additional information:	This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords:	riots; 2011 London Riots; place; micro-sociology; interactionism
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10056836