This article offers an analysis and critique of the political response to the 2011 urban riots in England. A brief account of the riots is advanced, where I connect the eruptions to the rise of advanced marginality and class/territorial stigmatisation in English cities, not only in terms of material deprivation but to the denial of dignity it implies. The article then re-places the swift deployment of punitive action and the ‘broken society’ discourse in response to the riots within the broader re-engineering of the state according to a neoliberal blueprint that articulates (inter alia) social welfare reduction and penal expansion at the bottom of the class structure, in contrast to a laissez-faire attitude at the top. By paying closer attention to the changing relationship between information and power (and in particular, the role of conservative think tanks), what Paul Gilroy calls a “poverty of the imagination” in addressing urban problems is exposed and challenged, revealing that the main issue to be addressed is not a broken society but a broken state.
LeysC.1990‘Still a question of hegemony.’New Left Review181, 119–128.
14.
MitchellK.2010. ‘Ungoverned space: global security and the geopolitics of broken windows,Political Geography29: 289–297.
15.
MonbiotG.2011‘Think of a tank’,The Guardian, 12th September.
16.
MooneyG.2009“The ‘Broken Society’ Election: Class Hatred and the Politics of Poverty and Place in Glasgow East”,Social Policy and Society8437–450
17.
MooneyG., and NealS.2010“‘Welfare worries’: mapping the directions of welfare futures in the contemporary UK”,Research, Policy and Planning27(3) p. 141–150
18.
MooneyG., and HancockL.2010“Poverty Porn and the Broken Society”,Variant39–40, p. 14–17.
19.
MountzA., and CurranW.2009. ‘Policing in drag: Giuliani goes global with illusions of control.’Geoforum40: 1033–1040.
20.
MurrayC.1990. The Emerging British Underclass (London: Institute for Economic Affairs).
21.
PeckJ.2006“Liberating the city: etween New York and New Orleans”,Urban Geography27681–783
22.
PeckJ., and TickellA.2007“Conceptualizing neoliberalism, thinking Thatcherism,” in Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers Eds LeitnerH, PeckJ, & SheppardE E (New York: Guilford Press) pp. 26–50
23.
PorterA., and RiddellM.2010“Iain Duncan-Smith: My welfare reforms are Beveridge for today, with a hint of Tebbit.”The Daily Telegraph, 6th November.
24.
ProbertR., and CallanS.2010. History and Family: Setting the Records Straight (London: Centre for Social Justice)
25.
SaundersP.2010. Beware False Prophets: Equality, the Good Society and The Spirit Level. (London: Policy Exchange).
26.
SotirisP.2010‘Rebels with a cause: the December 2008 Greek Youth Movement as the condensation of deeper social and political contradictions’,International Journal of Urban and Regional Research34203–209
27.
StandingG.2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury).
28.
SwansonK.2007‘Revanchist urbanism heads south: the regulation of indigenous beggars and street vendors in Ecuador.Antipode39: 708–728.
29.
ThaneP.2010. Happy Families? History and Family Policy (London: British Academy)
30.
WacquantL.2007“Territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality.”Thesis Eleven, 9166–77.
31.
WacquantL.2008. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (Polity PressCambridge).
32.
WacquantL.2009a. Prisons of Poverty (Expanded Edition) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
33.
WacquantL.2009b. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)
34.
WacquantL.2010‘From ‘public criminology’ to the reflexive sociology of criminological production and consumption’,British Journal of Criminology51, 438–448.
35.
McCannE., and WardK. eds. 2011. Mobile urbanism: city policymaking in the global age. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press).
36.
WattP.2006, ‘Respectability, roughness and ‘race’: neighbourhood place images and the making of working-class social distinctions in London’,International Journal of Urban and Regional Research30: 776–797.
37.
WilkinsonR., and PickettK.2010. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin).
