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.

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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.

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