Does Timing of Elections Instigate Riots? A Subnational Study of 16 Indian States, 1958-2004

We investigate whether timing of the elections leads to riots or not within India. In other words, does timing of elections instigate riots? The theoretical underpinning is that an incumbent government and opposition parties exercises control over their agents to instigate communal mob violence and riots during the election years. The motto behind instigating riots is that it leads to polarization of voters and thus benefits the respective constituents (incumbent government & opposition parties). Using time series crosssectional data for 16 major Indian states for the period 1958 ñ 2004, we find that scheduled elections are associated with increase in riots. Also intensity of riots, proxied by rate of growth rate of riots increases in scheduled election years. We also find that riots and intensity of riots are responsive to the propinquity to an election year. Meaning, as incumbent government nears the elections, riots and intensity of riots keeps increasing, while this is exactly opposite during the early years of incumbent government in office. These results suggest that elections generate ìriots cycleî in regionally, ethnically, culturally and socially diverse country like India.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64385/1/wp939.pd

Race, Rumours and Riots: Past, Present and Future

The riots of August 2011 have led to renewed discussion about the conditions that help to shape outbreaks of urban unrest. The role of race and ethnicity in the riots is one of the factors that has been discussed, although it has received relatively little attention when compared to earlier riots in 1981 and 1985. This paper argues that it is important to avoid easy generalisations about the role of race in the events of August 2011. It then explores the links between the riots and issues such as policing, urban deprivation and unemployment, and political inclusion and exclusion. It suggests that there is a need to locate the riots within their specific local and social environments and for more empirically focused research on the localities in which they occurred.Race; Riots; Collective Violence; Violence; Rumours

Consumer Culture and the 2011 'Riots'

This paper argues that in order to be properly comprehended, the 'riots' of August 2011 must be located in the context of an increasingly consumerist society. The suggestion is that the riots represented conformity to the underlying values of a consumerist society, if, momentarily, not its norms. To make this case, the riots are divided into three constituent 'moments'; the initial, the acquisitive and the nihilistic. Themes and ideas from the literature on consumer culture and crime are applied to the latter two.Consumer Culture, Consumerism, Riots

Representing the riots: the (mis)use of statistics to sustain ideological explanation

This paper analyses the way that figures were used to support two kinds of accounts of the riots of August 2011 prevalent in media coverage and in pronouncements by government ministers. The first of these accounts suggested that the rioters were typically characterised by uncivilized predispositions. The second kind of account suggested that damage to property was typically irrational or indiscriminate. These accounts echo discredited ‘convergence’ and ‘submergence’ explanations in early crowd psychology. We show that the ‘convergence’ explanation – that the rioters were typically ‘career criminals’ or gang-members – was based on arrest figures, treating as unproblematic the circular way that such data was produced (with those already known to the police most likely to be identified and arrested). The ‘submergence account – the suggestion that violence was typically indiscriminate or irrational – was based in part on grouping together attacks on properties in different districts; those areas where 'anyone and anything' was attacked were affluent districts where the target was the rich district itself. Like their academic counterparts, the two types of accounts of the riots of August 2011 are profoundly ideological, for they serve to render the riots marginal and meaningless rather than indicative of wider problems in society

The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots: Evidence from Property Values

In the 1960s numerous cities in the United States experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. Although social scientists have long studied the causes of the riots, the consequences have received much less attention. This paper examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Analysis of household-level data suggests that the racial gap in the value of property widened in riot-afflicted cities during the 1970s.

The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots

Between 1964 and 1971, hundreds of riots erupted in American cities, resulting in large numbers of injuries, deaths, and arrests, as well as in considerable property damage that was concentrated in predominantly black neighborhoods. There have been few studies of a systematic, econometric nature that examine the impact of the riots on the relative economic status of African Americans, or on the cities and neighborhoods in which the riots took. We present two complementary empirical analyses. The first uses aggregate, city-level data on income, employment, unemployment, and the area’s racial composition from the published volumes of the federal censuses. We estimate the “riot effect” by both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares. The second empirical approach uses individual-level census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series for 1950, 1970, and 1980. The findings suggest that the riots had negative effects on blacks’ income and employment that were economically significant and that may have been larger in the long run (1960-1980) than in the short run (1960- 1970). We view these findings as suggestive rather than definitive for two reasons. First, the data are not detailed enough to identify the precise mechanisms at work. Second, the wave of riots may have had negative spillover effects to cities that did not experience severe riots; if so, we would tend to underestimate the riots’ overall effect.

Cholera revolts: a class struggle we may not like

Few have studied cholera revolts comparatively, and certainly not over the vast terrain from Asiatic Russia to Quebec or across time from the first European cholera wave of the 1830s to the twentieth century. Scholars have instead concentrated on the first European cholera wave in the 1830s and have tended to explain cholera’s social violence within the political contexts of individual nations, despite these riots raging across vast differences in political landscapes from Czarist Russia to New York City but with similar fears and conspiracy theories of elites inventing cholera to cull populations of the poor. Moreover, the history of cholera’s social toxins runs against present generalizations on why epidemics spawn blame and violence against others. Cholera riots continued, and in Italy and Russia became geographically more widespread, vicious, and destructive long after the disease had lost its mystery. The article then poses the question of why historians on the left have not studied the class struggles provoked by cholera, with riots of 10,000, murdering state officials and doctors, destroying hospitals, town halls, and in the case of Donetsk, an entire city. Finally, the article draws parallels between Europe’s cholera experiences and those in West Africa with Ebola in 2014

The Covent Garden Old Price riots: protest and justice in late-Georgian London

This article explores perceptions of the law and of how agents of the law responded to events at Covent Garden Theatre during the bitter months between mid-October and late-November 1809, the height of the Covent Garden Old Price riots. It does so through the lens of the periodical press, a vital and voluminous source of not only what happened during the riots but also of opinions on what happened and of perceptions of what happened, opinions and perceptions that are the primary concern of this article. The article begins with a discussion of how the magistrates, 'police officers', justices, and lawyers who together encompassed the guardians of the legal system were seen, where they were seen, and what they did. It moves on to examine how the actions of those guardians and the legal system they represented were reported upon. And it concludes with a discussion of how theatregoers and Londoners were seen to have responded to those actions, moving a significant element of the conflict outside of Covent Garden Theatre and into the public press in a direct response to how they were policed as threats to public order and security. It argues that the Covent Garden Old Price riots was a significant urban act of multi-class protest because of the ways that it intersected with wider late-Georgian concerns, with discursive arenas where British liberty and the freedom of her subjects were contested and at stake

Protest or Riot?: Interpreting Collective Action in Contemporary France

Although both events were fundamentally acts of contestation led by different segments of France’s youth, the fall 2005 riots and the spring 2006 CPE protests received very different treatment in French public opinion. Whereas the riots were overwhelmingly condemned, the protests were not only tolerated but also often celebrated. By examining dominant interpretations of these events circulated in the news media alongside those of young people collected during a year of fieldwork in the public housing projects of a medium-sized French city, this paper shines light on fundamental French values and beliefs about how society ought to work while also contributing to ongoing debates about the cultural identity of such youth. More generally, it demonstrates the usefulness of comparison in the analysis of acts of political dissent

[Review of] Sipho Sepamla. A Ride on the Whirlwind: A Novel of Soweto

South African poet, playwright, and teacher Sipho Sepamla has in his second novel, produced a fictional but tensely revealing narrative of events surrounding the 1976 Soweto riots. Dedicated to the young heroes of the day, the novel chronicles daily life in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, distrust and terrorism