WE DIDN’T PREDICT A RIOT! ON THE PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIOLOGY

1. Martyn Hammersley The Open University British Sociological Association Annual Conference, April 2013 WE DIDN’T PREDICT A RIOT! ON THE PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIOLOGY

2. Public Engagement • Proposals for public sociology, civic sociology, the public university, etc: the obligation to impact on public discussion of policy issues (Burawoy 2005; Loader and Sparks 2010). • Demands from policymakers and funding bodies that social science demonstrate that it provides a significant return on public investment, by making an effective contribution to policymaking and practice. • The Campaign for Social Science, supported by the BSA: resisting funding cuts by seeking to demonstrate usefulness and ‘impact’.

3. Competition • There has always been a question about how sociologists can claim superior knowledge over those with direct practical experience of the phenomena they study. • In recent years there has also been increasing competition: from ‘think tanks’ of various kinds, interest groups, commercial organisations, consultancy firms and government quangos, all often claiming to produce research findings. • So what is sociology’s distinctive warrant, or indeed that of social science more generally?

4. A Critic ‘How much authority should we give to [social science] in our policy decisions?  […] Media reports often seem to assume that any result presented as “scientific” has a claim to our serious attention. But this is hardly a reasonable view. […] The core natural sciences […] are so well established that we readily accept their best-supported conclusions as definitive. […]  Even the best-developed social sciences like economics have nothing like this status. […] The [difference] lies in […] predictive power […].’ (Gutting 2012)

5. The Case of the 2011 Riots • Prediction? Were the riots predicted? Precise statements that riots will occur at specific times and places? No. Open-ended statements (‘We predict a riot’). Yes, but by lay people as well as by sociologists • Explanation? There was much public commentary on the riots, concerned with explaining them, and allocating blame. Sociologists contributed to this discussion, sometimes seeking to highlight the distinctive contribution of the discipline.

6. An Example ‘One of the first things that disappears when considering disturbances such as these is perspective. One loses sight of the fact that nine out of 10 local residents aren't rioting, that nine out of 10 who are rioting aren't local to the area, and that nine out of 10 of these non-locals aren't doing it to commit crime. […] Crime is a motive, but crowd behaviour is a more complex process, and it is sociology as a discipline that best understands crowd behaviour.’ (Brewer and Wollman 2011)

7. What warrant is there for the superiority of sociological explanations? • There was little or no discussion of this in the explanations offered for the riots by sociologists. • There is, however, a residual appeal to the significance of evidence, which might imply a claim to scientific status.

8. Diverse Explanations ‘The riots were due to spending cuts, they were due to educational policies, they were due to rap music, black culture, single-parent families, lack of respect, liberal education … and the list goes on.’ ‘How can one explain an event before we really know what that event was? One might as well suggest that the riots happened because of the place of Mars in relation to Venus or because a five-footed calf was born in June. Without evidence, any opinion is equally good or bad.’ (Reicher and Stott 2011:Preface)

9. Challenging issues • Are sociological accounts of phenomena like riots superior to commonsense ones, for practical or political purposes? • If so, what kind of science is sociology? • What form does sociological expertise take? • Can it be translated into effective contributions in the public sphere?

10. What kind of science, if any? • Positivism: dismissal of commonsense as defective understanding. • Marxism: dismissal of commonsense as ideology, as systematically misleading. These positions provide clear grounds for sociologists to claim superior knowledge. However, the epistemological positions that are now most influential portray all knowledge as reflecting particular presuppositions and commitments. So, can there be any sociological expertise?

11. Modes of Sociological Contribution • Specific research (of varying kinds) into the riots, from informal to systematic. • The ‘application’ of findings from studies of other riots. • The ‘application’ of theories previously developed to explain this type of event. • The ‘application’ of general theories (Marxism, Rational Choice, Frustration/Aggression, etc). While analytically distinct, these modes can be, and are often, combined.

12. Specific Research on the 2011 Riots • Three studies, all adopting ‘popularising’ forms: Reicher and Stott (2011) was produced in 3 weeks and is aimed at a general audience. Lewis and Newburn (2011) is highly descriptive in both mode of presentation and use of data, reflecting its link to The Guardian. Morrell et al (2011) is a report produced by NatCen for the Cabinet Office. • There are competing non-academic empirical studies: for example Lammy 2011 and the Citizens’ Inquiry into the Tottenham Riots.

13. The Role of Evidence • Most explanations for the riots that sociologists provided did not seem to be based directly on research into the riots, instead the main source of empirical evidence relied on seemed to be the media. • There was not much explicit reference to this evidence or to the sociological literature, including to sociological theory.

14. An Influential Sociological Account ‘This was not a rebellion […] of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority – but a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers, people offended and humiliated by the display of riches to which they had been denied access. We have been all coerced and seduced to view shopping as the recipe for the good life and the principal solution of all life problems – but then a large part of the population has been prevented from using that recipe.’ (Bauman 2011a)

15. Sociological Expertise? • Bauman’s explanation perhaps draws on Merton’s theory of anomie, and on more recent work about consumerism. However, this is largely implicit, and does it amount to strong evidential support. • Furthermore, other sociologists offered rather different, even conflicting, accounts for the riots.

16. A Second Sociological Account ‘[…] Without wanting to say that Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis is simplistic […], one of the dangers of calling the riots consumer riots is that we bring an individualised notion into this discussion. […] Many social issues that existed in the 1980s and 1990s have not disappeared – unemployment, inequality, policing . [Let’s] not fall into the trap of saying that the riots of today are consumer riots and the riots of 1980s and 2001 were different in that kind of way. […]’ (Solomos 2011)

17. Prefiguration or Echo? ‘There was a culture of “wanting stuff”, said an 18-year-old man […] “It’s like, seen as if you’re not wearing like, and you’re poor, no one don’t want to be your friend”. Some interviewees blamed corporations, advertising and the media for fuelling this acquisitional consumerism. [One said] “That night those young people they had freedom, because they’re pushed with certain things in their face all day […] ‘Buy phones, clothes, cars, jewellery’”’ (Lewis and Newburn 2011)

18. Lay Appeals to Inequality ‘If you’re black or coloured skin, basically, you’re at the bottom sort of thing,’ said one interviewee in the capital. ‘And then white people, they start off in the middle and then can get to the top. But black people always start from the bottom’. Another interviewee […] directly linked those who took to the streets to people’s concerns about inequality. ‘If they give us, the black people, the opportunities like they give the white community, then that wouldn’t have happened,’ he said (Lewis and Newburn 2011)

19. Politicians’ Tales: Cameron ‘It is all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country. […] [T]here are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick. […] It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and their actions do not have consequences. […] We need to have a clearer code of standards and values that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line.’ (Cameron 2011)

20. A Sociological Theory of Delinquency ‘Control theories assume that delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken’ (Hirshi 2002:16) ‘The more weakened the groups to which [the individual] belongs, the less he depends on them, the more he consequently depends only on himself and recognizes no other rules of conduct than what are founded on his private interests’ (Durkheim 1951:209; quoted in Hirshi)

21. Summary • Sociologists have put forward quite different explanations from one another (in terms of crowd behaviour, frustrated consumers, or inequality). • Riot participants’ and politicians’ explanations are often versions of ones found in the sociological literature. • Even the explanation put forward by Conservative politicians that many sociologists have been keen to oppose has a sociological pedigree.

22. Conclusion Two possible explanations for the fact that there is no clear evidence of sociological expertise: • This is lost in translation, as sociological findings are turned into public discourse. If so, is this inevitable or a reflection of the current state of the public sphere? • There is no difference between sociological and commonsense explanations; either in principle, or given current sociological practice. Are there just conflicting ideological accounts? What does this mean for the public engagement of sociology?

23. References Bassel, L. (2012) Media and the Riots, London, Citizen Journalist Educational Trust and The-Latest.com. Bauman, Z. (2011a) in Network: the magazine of the British Sociological Association, No 109, Winter, p22. Bauman, Z. (2011b) ‘The London Riots – On Consumerism coming Home to Roost’ Social Europe Journal. Available at: http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/ Brewer, J. (2012) ‘The new public university’, BSA Sociology and the Cuts Blog, available at (accessed 7.7.12): http://sociologyandthecuts.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/the-new-public-university-by-john-brewer/ Brewer, J. and Wollman, H. (2011) ‘Letter from the British Sociological Association’, The Guardian, Thursday 11 August 2011. British Sociological Association Network Newsletter, Winter 2011, ‘Not so “pure and simple” to explain’, p22 Buroway, M. (2005) ‘For Public Sociology’, American Sociological Review 70, pp2–28. Reprinted in British Journal of Sociology 56, 2, pp259–94.

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25. Johnson, B. (23 March 2012) ‘Boris Johnson says poor schools helped cause riots’, Available at (accessed 20.6.12): http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/23/boris-johnson-bad-schools-london-riots. Lammy, D. (2011) Out of the Ashes, London, Guardian Books. Lewis, P. and Newburn, T. (2011) Reading the Riots: Investigating England's summer of disorder, London, Guardian Books. Loader, I. and Sparks, R. (2010) ‘Wacquant and civic sociology’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 10, 4, pp405-15. North London Citizens (2011) Citizens’ Inquiry into the Tottenham Riots, London. Available at (accessed 19.8.12): http://www.citizensuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Citizens-Inquiry-into-the-Tottenham-Riots-REPORT.pdf Reicher, S. and Stott, C. (2011) Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots, London, Constable and Robinson. Shildrick, T.BSA blog: http://tinyurl.com/672delx/ Reprinted in BSA Network. Solomos, J. (2011) in Network: the magazine of the British Sociological Association, No 109, Winter, p22. Zizek, S. (2011) ‘Shoplifters of the world unite’. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite