Who controls the city? A micro-historical case study of the spread of rioting across North London in August 2011
Abstract
A defining characteristic of major urban riots is their spread from one location to another over time. The English riots of August 2011 displayed this pattern, and a number of cities were affected. This paper analyses the patterns and sequences of collective behaviour in the initiation and development of rioting in the London borough of Enfield, the first area to experience spread beyond the initial rioting in the neighbouring Haringey. Our analysis suggests that rioting in Enfield was a result of protagonists converging to deliberately create conflict as a social identity-based expression of power. Over time, their motivations and the patterns of collective action changed as a function of interactions and emergent affordances in the location. We explore the implications of our data for models of urban rioting. Specifically, we contend that the spread of riots across cities may be driven by a complex interplay between social identity, intergroup dynamics and empowerment.
Citation
Ball , R , Stott , C , Drury , J , Neville , F G , Reicher , S D & Choudhury , S 2019 , ' Who controls the city? A micro-historical case study of the spread of rioting across North London in August 2011 ' , City , vol. 23 , no. 4-5 , pp. 483-504 . https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2019.1685283
Publication
City
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1360-4813Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright (c) 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2019.1685283
Description
This research was funded by a grant to John Drury, Clifford Stott and Steve Reicher from the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/N01068X/1].Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
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