From ‘Criminality’ to Marginality: Rioting against a Broken State

Abstract

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.