Riots in the welfare state: The contours of a modern-day moral economy

Abstract

This article accounts for the tacit politics of the 2013 Stockholm riots. Based on interviews with local residents and a study of the parliamentary debate, it is suggested that the post-war Swedish welfare state generated commonly shared conceptions, which ascribed a temporary legitimacy to the riots within the community by conceptualizing poor living conditions and police racism as government infractions. The modern moral economy was endorsed by the political establishment, with a cynical twist. For future studies of similar riots, it is argued that, although the classical notion of moral economy successfully directs attention to the normative conceptions that propel riots, the notion must be extended with a racialized dimension, the concept of citizenship, and new incarnations of government infraction.