Disposable People: Class, culture and the English Riots

• In Event: 111 - Regular Session. Class Cultures

Abstract

Almost two years after the English riots there has been little attempt of a political analysis of those events, or the causes within society leading up to them. There have been no policy review, or public enquiry into the events of that week in August 2011 or the events, conditions which lead to social unrest, as demonstrated in previous riots within the UK.
Consequently this article builds upon the ethnographic work undertaken on the Nottingham St Anns, council (or public housing) estate, an inner city neighbourhood of 15,000 people over an eight year period. Although the researcher has lived on this council estate for over twenty years with her family, friends and neighbours, and the data relating to the riots is only a very small part of the ethnographic study. The research began mapping the neighbourhood, and working alongside the families for 6 years prior to August 2011 and for 2 years after, and although the 8th and 9th of August the dates the disturbances took place in Nottingham are important regarding the wider events throughout the UK, they were only a flashpoint in Nottingham a 48 hour window that was taken advantage of by only a few of the disposable people, those who are living with the consequences of a thirty year plan of neo-liberal policy in the UK.

Author

• Lisa Louise Mckenzie, London School of Economics and Political Science