King Mob: Perceptions, Prescriptions and Presumptions About the Policing of England's Riots

As journalists and academics, politicians and other commentators struggled to make sense of the social unrest across England, they reached for theoretical understandings of the crowd that have long since been discredited. The powerful imagery of the madding crowd has always been a popular trope with journalists, but what concerned us was the way in which even sociological commentators echoed such ideas. This paper, therefore, draws on our past research, informal interviews with senior police officers and media accounts to offer an analysis of the riots, how they were policed, and contemporary understandings of crowd behaviour. In so doing we question whether current understandings of collective behaviour, deriving from socio-political expressions of anger or protest, are equipped to make sense of the English riots. Similarly, we ask whether police public order tactics need to change. We conclude that the residual attachment to myths of the madding crowd continues to hamper the search for flexible, graded and legitimate means of managing social unrest.Riots; Crowd Theory; Public Order Policing; Negotiated Management

'Pants to Poverty'? Making Poverty History, Edinburgh 2005

July 2005 saw 225,000 people march through Edinburgh in the city's largest ever demonstration. Their cause was the idealistic injunction to \'Make Poverty History\' (MPH). This paper presents an analysis of the MPH march, focusing particularly on the interplay between protestors, the police and the media. Drawing on ongoing research, it interrogates the disjunction between projected and actual outcomes, paying particular scrutiny to media speculation about possible violence. It also asks how MPH differed from previous G8 protests and what occurred on the day itself. The paper considers three key aspects: the composition and objectives of the marchers (who was on the march, why they were there and what they did?), the constituency that the protestors were trying to reach, and the media coverage accorded to the campaign. The intent underlying this threefold focus is an attempt to understand the protestors and what motivated them, but also to raise the question of how \'successful\' they were in communicating their message.Make Poverty History, Protest, Media, Policing, Social Movements

Party Political Panthers:Hegemonic Tamil Politics and the Dalit Challenge

The Viduthalai Ciruthaigal Katchi (VCK, Liberation Panther Party) has successfully transformed from the largest Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu into a recognised political organisation. Social movement theorists like Gamson (1990) view political recognition and engagement as one of the main aims and successes of social mobilisation. Despite the obvious achievements of the VCK, however, activists and commentators express disappointment or disillusionment with its performance. The Panthers clearly reject the caste hierarchy, but they increasingly adopt hegemonic forms of politics which can undermine their aims. This paper, thus, engages with the questions of movement institutionalisation by tracing the political trajectory of the VCK and charting its resistance to and compliance with Dravidian hegemony. It argues that institutionalisation needs to be understood within particular socio-political contexts and notes how the hegemony of Dravidian politics partly explains the disjuncture between activist and political perceptions. It portrays how the dominant political parties have set the template for what it means to ‘do’ politics in Tamil Nadu which serves as both an opportunity and a constraint for potential challengers

Gendering caste:Honor, patriarchy and violence

Introduction The central significance of gender to the operation of caste was vividly highlighted for me during fieldwork on Dalit politics and mobilization in 2012. I visited the offices of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) in Madurai (central Tamil Nadu) to interview the local leader Vikraman. He detailed the work of the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front, which has documented the many and varied forms of untouchability practiced in contemporary Tamil Nadu. One example c..