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‘Instead of giving up their wealth to control their deficit, the burden has been put on the masses. There are pressures in crisis and it's evident that people would protest in such a situation.’ No, not Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, but, ironically, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad’s verdict on August’s urban unrest in English cities. No doubt, he’d also watched events unfold on live television and they certainly were shocking. Buildings and businesses set on fire, shops looted, homes burgled, citizens attacked, several people killed – including three men in Birmingham trying to defend their property – and the police attacked in the streets and forced to retreat. For four nights there really was panic on the streets of London as well as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Gloucester.  

The police crackdown was large-scale and swift, using CCTV images and other information to track down and arrest more than 3,000 people across England, almost 65 per cent in London. By 24^th August, 1474 people had appeared in court; 22 per cent were under the age of 18 and 90 per cent were male. Magistrates Courts in London opened all hours to deal with the influx, dispensing stiff ‘deterrent’ sentences. Since then, there has been no recurrence, prompting the Prisons Minister to suggest that it was ‘an exceptional event’ that would lead to ‘a one-off increase in prison numbers’ – already at an all-time high.

Unsurprisingly, politicians and commentators turned quickly to the causes, though there was no agreement amidst a chaotic swirl of possibilities. Prime Minister David Cameron argued that the problem was not poverty, unemployment or severe deprivation but a lack of morality and abdication of responsibility on the part of rioters, looters and some parents. Cameron returned to his old pre-election theme of Britain as a ‘broken society’ in need of fixing. Ed Miliband spoke of irresponsibility as a wider social malaise, taking in bankers’ bonuses, the MPs’ expenses scandal and phone hacking at the News of the World. When rich and powerful people ignore their responsibility to society, don’t expect the poor not to follow suit. There is, inevitably, more than a hint of party political positioning in such arguments.    

Sociological research and explanations were generally not seen as relevant. Indeed, on 9^th August, London Mayor Boris Johnson didn’t want to hear any ‘economic and sociological justifications’ for the riots. He and many others agreed that a return to ‘robust’ policing and longer, deterrent sentences would bring order back to the streets. However, in a newspaper article just 5 days later, Boris radically changed his mind arguing that ‘We must look into the minds of the looters and the robbers, and try to grasp why you would dip into the backpack of a young man you were pretending to help’. He also noted that ‘The overwhelming majority, of course, came from the lower socio-economic groups, from the ranks of those who have been left the furthest behind’ and that ‘these young people have been betrayed … by an educational system and family background that failed to give them discipline, or hope, or ambition …’. Another key factor, he said, was that ‘… the police lost control in the first few hours’.       

The new, more sociologically aware Mayor told us that ‘the explanations will turn out to be more complex and more various’. I can only agree. The evidence to date suggests that no single-factor explanation will be satisfactory. We can best appreciate this by questioning the two main explanations on offer. “Britain is a ‘broken society’.” Well, there is little or no evidence for this assertion. The disorder was confined to England and did not spread to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Broken England? Maybe, but then why did other major cities escape? Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, Bradford, Plymouth, Southampton, Leicester and more did not join in. Why not? The broken society thesis seems over-generalized.

“Poverty and unemployment are the main causes.” As Boris notes, a majority of the younger participants came from ‘lower socio-economic’ groups and this does suggest some sort of correlation. However, as our students are taught to repeat parrot-fashion, correlation does not equal causation. Is poverty and deprivation significantly worse or more widespread in Hackney and Handsworth than in Hull or Bradford or Glasgow? Not really. The first batch of cases coming to court also shows that a minority of looters and rioters had jobs, were earning a living and yet still got caught up in the free-for-all. Their involvement can’t be explained by the poverty thesis.  

The first thing to recognize is that there was no unity to the events. For some, the police’s fatal shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham and the failure of police to speak to his family and friends showed high-handedness, even arrogance. On top of existing resentment that stop-and-search practice disproportionately singles out young Black men, this triggered protests (but not riots or looting) against discrimination by the Metropolitan force. On the other hand, some of the subsequent rioting and looting was clearly quite well organized and gang-related, leading to concerns about the use of social networks. Another type of looter was the pure opportunist, stealing from damaged shops ‘just because they could’ – a sort of illegitimate late-night shopping. And of course, experienced burglars were able to use the riots as a screen to carry on their ‘normal’ activities – court records show a significant number of those charged with burglary did have previous convictions.

In parts of London, other local groups saw an opportunity to show the police that ‘we’re in control and we can do what we like’, as one young woman told a reporter. By setting fire to cars and using them to block roads to the police, some of those people who genuinely have been ‘left behind’ in the race for wealth and prosperity, got to experience control over their lives that is normally elusive. Still others were attracted by the undoubted excitement of the events. We shouldn’t underestimate this aspect of the disorder, which can be quite intoxicating, especially for young people during boring school holidays.

What we can conclude is that on the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th and 9^th August, a variety of participants with a range of motivations coalesced into a frenzy of rioting, looting, burglary and arson. But Boris is partly right again: the response of authorities also matters. In using standard ‘public order’ policing tactics (seen on live TV), the police were perceived as weak by some, who were emboldened to take advantage. In one sense the Prisons Minister is correct: this was a ‘one-off event’ brought about by a combination of several factors. But it doesn’t follow that disorder will not recur. Wherever there are longstanding, underlying grievances, a mutual loss of trust between social groups and authorities, a triggering event and the opening up of opportunities for action, there remains the potential for urban disorder. But every element of this equation can be worked on to reduce that potential if, like Boris, politicians and policy-makers can get beyond simplistic ideas of social causation.          

Reference

Keen (and old) music lovers will know that the title of this piece is the chorus line from The Smiths (1986) single Panic by Morrissey and Marr.

Chapter 6, Cities and Urban Life, covers urban unrest on pp. 225-6. Theories of crime and deviance can be found in Chapter 21, Crime and Deviance. There is also some useful material on social movement theories on pp. 1011-21, including Blumer’s theory of social unrest on pp. 1011-12.                        

Philip W. Sutton

Forget the Internet and digital age; July 2011 was dominated by an old tabloid newspaper, the News of the World. In case you missed it, James Murdoch announced the paper would close on 7^th July after 168 years in print. One private investigator and the paper’s royal editor were jailed in 2007 for illegally hacking into the mobile phone messages of members of the royal family. Large sums were also reportedly paid to several high-profile personalities and celebrities to settle other phone hacking claims before they came to court. An ongoing police investigation revealed up to 4,000 people’s phones may have been illegally hacked, including that of a murder victim during the time she was actually missing.

But what tactics are legitimate for journalists in search of a story? Does it depend on the story or the targets? How much information, personal or otherwise, should be in the public domain? The Daily Telegraph paid for stolen information on the details of MPs’ expense claims and was widely praised for publishing it. But it was still stolen information, wasn’t it? BBC’s Panorama programme uncovered serious abuses of patients with learning difficulties at a care home in Bristol. But this involved someone posing as a care worker who secretly filmed the abuse. Again, was this legitimate? Is hacking mobile phones also legitimate if it reveals information that is ‘in the public interest’? And who decides what the public interest is, anyway?          

Which brings us to Wikileaks. Founded in December 2006, the website allows anyone to submit material anonymously, mainly classified or restricted documents, videos and so on. This welter of material is then assessed by Wikileaks reviewers who decide what to publish online. Anonymity of submission encourages whistle-blowers in sensitive positions to contribute. Founder Julian Assange sees Wikileaks as a radical opening up of information so that people can see what is done in their name. In his words: ‘We are an intelligence agency of the people, casting pearls before swine.’

By making available military documents, secret diplomatic communications, email conversations and much more, Wikileaks opens up the behind-the-scenes machinery of international diplomacy and realpolitik.

Many governments see Wikileaks’ radical openness as dangerous and irresponsible. Web-hosting companies and financial firms such as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal, have withdrawn their services. Has it compromised national security? Has it put soldiers and undercover operations in danger? Could it ruin personal relationships in international relations and damage trade links? The ‘information age’ wasn’t meant to include this, was it?   

Sociologically though, Wikileaks fits perfectly into the global age. Sociologists used to talk of the zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the times’, an indefinable cultural ethos in specific periods. This concept has fallen out of favour, maybe because it has too many ‘spiritual’ undertones for an empirical social science. But it is still helpful. One way of tapping into the zeitgeist is to look at specific trends which coalesce into an overall pattern. Wikileaks is part of a growing trend towards freedom of information and open communication, which can be found in many other areas of social life. Here are a few examples.

Job applicants can request to see ‘confidential’ references, local and national government make policy documents and expense claims publicly available online and freedom of information requests can uncover the salaries of public employees. Confessional TV encourages people to share their deepest secrets and reality TV broadcasts the minutiae of contestants’ everyday (but contrived) lives in real time. Tracy Emin’s ‘confessional art’ turns everyday experience into artworks, laying bare the intimate details of the artist’s life. Open-plan offices, open-plan interiors for homes, glass sheets replacing solid walls and large, open kitchen-diners are all de rigueur. Light is good, dark is bad. Giddens, Beck and others have also explored the way that frank and open communication has moved to the centre of intimate relationships. Mutual disclosure is demanded as a sign of trust and not to disclose brings mistrust and enmity.   

But is complete openness necessarily good? The News of the World scandal suggests there may be limits. Richard Sennett saw the demand for openness and mutual disclosure as vestiges of Gemeinschaft, those community values and bonds that Ferdinand Tönnies described as authentic, solid and stable compared to the loose, fleeting mere associations (Gesellschaft) that typify urban life. Sennett argued that a return to small-scale life on the land is not realistic, but the Gemeinschaft ideal persists, mutated into the desire for open communication. Yet under modern conditions this ideal is destructive, infiltrating public life and politics, turning politicians into celebrities assessed on their personal qualities (as presented on TV), not their policies or what they actually do in power.                 

The ideal of entirely open relations, said Sennett, mistakenly assumes that the self is a box of delights, rather than the cabinet of horrors we all know it to be. Can we really handle hearing everything that others think, feel and say about us, however nasty or distressing? Anyone who has sent a ‘private’ email to the ‘wrong’ person, or indeed received one, will understand the problem. Not everything we think about each other ought to be out in the open. How else can people who don’t necessarily like each other get along well enough to work together for a common good? Some things are best kept to ourselves if there’s to be any sort of liveable, civilized life for us all.

Sennett’s argument cuts against the grain of the Zeitgeist. Can international diplomacy survive the opening up of every email, letter and phone call to public scrutiny? Will open communication improve our political culture? Will the Wikileaks principle enhance our freedoms or poison the emerging global society? Over the next few years it seems, we are about to find out. 

Development of the mass media and the digital revolution are discussed in Chapter 17, The Media. Sociological theories of intimate relations are covered in Chapter 9, Families and Intimate Relationships, especially pp. 329-31 and 371-6. Tönnies’s ideas of Gemeinschaft are briefly outlined on pp. 208-9.                       

Philip W. Sutton

Good news – on average, we’re all living longer and we’re staying fit and healthy for longer too. Bad news – as we are all living longer, we’ll have to retire later and the state pension age is rising for both men and women. If you work in the private sector, you’ll probably be paying more for a poorer pension and if you work in the public sector, you’ll have to pay more for longer and get a poorer pension on retirement. Oh, and if you need to be housed and cared for in your old age, then the state can’t afford that either. In the UK, the 2011 Dilnot Report (The Commission on Funding of Care and Support) suggests we should take out insurance or release equity from our homes and pensions to pay for long-term care. Old age in the twenty-first century ain’t what it used to be.

Of course, the 2008 financial crisis and fragile recovery is impacting on welfare provision and has changed the entire climate within which discussions on ‘affordability’ are taking place. Some politicians and campaigners no doubt see this as the perfect moment to slim down the welfare state under the cover of prudent planning. Is the European model of the welfare state, however nationally interpreted and implemented, coming to an end? In the ‘age of austerity’ amid public sector cuts and a rethinking of welfare, we do seem to be moving inexorably away from universal benefits and ‘cradle to grave’ support. In 40 years’ time, we may well look back on the welfare state as a relatively short, 60-year experiment that was just not sustainable over the long term. British Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, will probably not be repeating Harold Macmillan’s 1957 comment, in the midst of rising post-war production and incomes: ‘Indeed, let us be frank about it, most of our people have never had it so good.’

However, there is more going on here than just economics. Sociologically, the kind of changes being proposed on the standard retirement age, pension provision, welfare benefits and public spending cuts, have the potential to re-shape the life-course. Sociologists prefer the concept of life-course to those of the life-cycle or life-span, both of which imply a series of universal biological stages. The only really fixed biological stages for most human beings are birth, life and death, but using these to try and make sense of human life doesn’t get us very far. The concept of the life-course is less deterministic, based on socio-cultural circumstances in different societies, which produce different life-course stages and timings, often for different social groups. (See, for example, the Centre for Research on Ageing at Southampton.)

One of the simplest examples is the creation of ‘teen-age’ and the teenager in the 1950s and ’60s, the result of rising incomes, consumer culture and pop music, which combined to put more money in the pockets of young people recently freed from National Service and the loosening of frugal attitudes associated with rationing. More disposable income was spent on fashionable clothes, records and consumer goods as a teenage market developed and solidified. Today of course, ‘teen-age’ appears as a natural life-cycle stage that has always and everywhere been the same. But it hasn’t. It is, in large measure, the social creation of particular types of society.

Similarly, childhood has undergone some quite significant shifts over time. My own grandmother, for example, went out to work aged 12 in semi-residential domestic service, walking 4 miles each way from home and back to do so. No ‘education, education, education’ policy back then. Spare the violins though, she said she enjoyed it. Today, this is widely seen in the developed countries as a form of child exploitation and abuse, which only carries on in developing countries and must be stamped out. Extending compulsory schooling to all, lengthening the number of years in school, both at the outset and the end, have helped transform what we think ‘childhood’ is and how ‘children’ should be treated.

Old age is no different, though sociological research hasn’t really caught up in this area yet. I suspect it is about to do so. When are we ‘old’ these days? A conventional starting point has been state pensionable age (in the UK that’s 60 for women, 65 for men). But the government plans to increase the pension age for women to 65 by 2018 – bringing equality with men – by 2020 to raise it again to 66 for all, before another rise to 68 by 2038. Beyond that, 70 or even higher is likely. At the same time, the compulsory retirement age of 65 is to be scrapped, allowing workers to stay on if they wish.

There is a logic to this process. After the Second World War when the pension age was set at 65, life expectancy was just 66.4 for men and 72.5 for women in the UK. In England in 2010, this had risen to 77 and 82 respectively and estimates suggest that by 2056 it will be 84 and 89. With no change, state pensions would be paid for many more years, cost far more and, some say, will be unaffordable. Perhaps we should see these shifts as a belated catching-up with reality? In 2006, Denmark raised the pension age from 65 to 67 years, and from 2025 pension age will be indexed to life expectancy. Italy and Greece also plan the same linkage by 2015 and 2020 respectively.   

It is always easier to spot major social changes with hindsight, but much more difficult while they’re in process. But this is exactly what we’re witnessing at present: a radical change to the meaning of ‘old age’ as a life-course stage, which is well underway. Social gerontologists already make a distinction between the early or ‘young’ old (65-74), the ‘middle old’ (75-84) and the ‘old old’ (85 onwards). As the pension age shifts, no doubt these categories will too. Abolition of the compulsory retirement age should also undermine ideas of generational unfairness for younger workers paying for older people’s pensions and care. But there will be some strange consequences too. Maybe those who are able and willing to work into their mid-70s will frown on their 68-year-old neighbours who choose to retire? 68-year-old ‘spongers’ anyone?

Chapter 8 ‘The Life-Course’ is the logical place to begin, especially pp. 295-320. Welfare states are included in Chapter 12 ‘Poverty, Social Exclusion and Welfare’, pp. 507-17 and the social significance of work is covered on pp. 921-32.

Philip W. Sutton     

For more on the life-course, you may be interested to take a look at Lorraine Green’s Understanding the Life Course whichcombines the important insights sociology and psychology have to bring to the study of the life course, particularly illustrating their relevance to welfare.

Here are two recent cases involving the new forms of social media – those Internet-based media (Facebook, Delicious, YouTube) that facilitate conversation and networking with content provided by the users. In the first case, a married, world-famous British football player allegedly has a seven-month-long affair with a former Big Brother housemate. The affair ends and the player takes out an injunction preventing the housemate and a tabloid newspaper from revealing his identity. However, a user of the social media site Twitter names the player in a tweet and soon his name is all over the ‘Twittersphere’. Suspecting that the original culprit is a journalist trying to get around the injunction, the player’s solicitor demands that Twitter furnish them with the identity of the whistle-blower; Twitter considers it. Meanwhile, in the House of Commons no less, a Liberal Democrat MP, John Hemming (we can name him), uses the device of ‘parliamentary privilege’ – which allows him to name names with legal impunity – to name the player in the Commons. As newspapers are allowed to report on all matters in Parliament, the cat is well and truly out of the bag and the player is named.

In the second, lesser-reported tale, an English council, South Tyneside, took legal action in California (the home of Twitter) in relation to an anonymous blogger, ‘Mr Monkey’, who had allegedly made libellous statements of drug use, sexual activity and corruption about three councillors and a council official. The council says it took the action because it has a duty of care towards its employees and seeks to defend its own interests. Are these everyday stories of twenty-first-century celebrity and public culture? Maybe, but they also show us something of the ambiguous character of the new social media we all think we understand so well.

What these cases show is that there is no agreed, widespread interpretation of what the status of social media like Twitter or Facebook really is. Twitter users often describe their activity as a modern version of the very ancient art of gossiping over the garden fence or down the local pub. If so, then trying to prevent online gossip through legal means is just as likely to succeed as barristers trying to intervene to prevent my neighbour leaning over the fence on a Sunday afternoon to tell me the local ‘news’. Indeed, as a season ticket holder at the football player’s club, I and several hundred, maybe thousands of other fans had heard the sorry tale a long time before it made the Twittersphere. This was but via the more usual avenue of fans and stewards gossiping about ‘seeing him out with her’ or ‘hearing it from a reliable source’ close to the player. This genuinely is gossip – passed on from person to person, usually through face-to-face communication, though these days also via mobile phone calls or text messaging. This method is still quite slow in spreading the news and the veracity of the information remains unconfirmed at best.

However, things are quite different with social media. Once the football player was named on Twitter, the information spread rapidly and an estimated 75,000 people tweeted the player’s name, many in protest at the legal request for the original whistle-blower to be named. This was Twitter’s ‘I am Spartacus!’ moment. Social media are different from gossip in other ways too. Twitter, for instance, operates through written content and is therefore not directly comparable with old-fashioned gossip delivered through speech. Posting messages on Twitter is closer to writing an open letter to a newspaper or sending an email to everyone in your and all your friends’ address books. Because it’s written down, it may also be considered differently in law. The offence of defamation is slander when spoken, but libel when written down, for example. It appears that legal systems are currently running behind popular interpretations of social media as purely gossip forums, and may even be at odds with the views of social media users. More clashes between the two appear inevitable.

What was the response of Twitter to these two cases? In the first, the player’s legal bid was made in England not the US, which meant that Twitter did not have to provide names and identities. However, if the request was made in the US then Twitter admitted it would have to co-operate with the request. So far, a pragmatic acceptance of reality and the need to start burying the story seem to have prevailed. Twitter’s European head, Tony Wang, also warned, at a meeting of the e-G8 forum in Paris, that the site would hand over information when required by courts and that users would have to defend themselves if they broke privacy injunctions.

In the second case, the council’s request for the blogger’s identity was accepted and Twitter did release the information, though it forewarned one suspect, giving them 21 days to lodge a legal argument against the action before releasing their details. Twitter provides a platform for social networking and ‘gossip’, but don’t expect it to fight your legal cases. Google’s annual reports show that it also receives literally thousands of requests from agencies in the USA, UK and elsewhere for user data, such as IP addresses, email addresses and mobile phone numbers, though these do not attract much interest in the press.    

There is a simple conclusion to be drawn: social media are part of, and not separate from, the rest of society. This is such a trite sociological proposition that it may seem unnecessary. However, the experience of using and being part of social media can convey a feeling that these sites are global, open communication spaces that exist outside or beyond grounded social reality in some totally free, open cyberworld. Yet of course, the servers that host the sites really do exist physically within nation-state boundaries and are subject to the laws that operate in those national contexts. I am reminded of a comment made by one of my old lecturers during a discussion of virtual worlds and the advent of virtual reality suits, helmets and gloves that allow people to see and experience virtual reality scenarios in real time: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but all I see is a person moving around wearing gloves and a hat.’ In short, the virtual world depends for its very existence on the ‘real one’.  

Chapter 17 The Media is the obvious place to explore these issues, though Internet use is also covered on pp. 816-7, and social interaction in cyberspace on pp. 275-6. Facebook features on pp. 821-2, and information technology and social change on pp. 122, 125-6.

 

For an interesting and readable study of Facebook and the roles it plays in contemporary social life, you might be interested in taking a look at Daniel Miller’s Tales from Facebook. You can see the author introduce the book here.

Philip W. Sutton

2001 witnessed the event now known simply as ‘9/11’, when hijacked commercial flights were flown by al-Qaeda suicide terrorists into the World Trade Center in New York and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, killing some 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden, leader and figurehead of al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility on behalf of the group. In 2011 the USA finally tracked down and killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, prompting wild celebrations in America and threats of revenge from his supporters. The first decade of the twenty-first century will probably be remembered, quite rightly, as the decade of global terrorism.

Terrorist attacks on the only remaining world superpower were not only literally shocking, but they also led to George W. Bush’s oft-repeated policy of a ‘war on terror’. Not just al-Qaeda, with its distorted interpretation of Islam, but all terrorist groups with global ambitions and states that sponsor or harbour terrorists were in the USA’s sights (Bush’s statement on the war on terror can be read here.)

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, home to al-Qaeda training camps, was overthrown by the end of 2001 and Taliban fighters fled to the mountains to regroup, though the conflict in Afghanistan continues today. The invasion of Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq by a US-led coalition of forces followed in 2003, on the premise that the regime had developed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (though none were ever found). The regime quickly collapsed, though an insurgency (including groups associated with al-Qaeda) against coalition forces and the interim government continued for some time afterwards. In addition to these major military interventions, there has been anti-terrorism legislation in many countries, a strengthening of intelligence services and a climate of heightened insecurity and surveillance right around the world. Global terrorist acts and government responses have dominated international politics for 10 years.

Of course, whether the ‘war on terror’ has been successful overall is open to debate. (See UK former Foreign Minister, David Miliband’s criticism here.) Many critics see it as ineffective and perhaps even self-defeating, as the language of ‘war’ and ‘crusades’ has been used by terrorist groups to recruit new members and supporters, especially young Muslims who can be persuaded that the USA really is the enemy of all Muslims. Terror attacks continue to be planned and discovered even today and there seems no end in sight to so-called ‘Islamic terrorism’. There are also the less discussed casualties of this broad offensive: the many civilians caught up in the bombing raids, fighting and insurgent attacks (at least 110,000 killed in the Iraq invasion and its aftermath, and thousands more in the Afghanistan conflict). The hardline policy of a ‘war on terror’ has claimed more innocent victims than terrorists.

Yet for others, the ‘war’ has to be assessed in a long timeframe. Sadaam and his Ba’athist regime are gone and Iraq has held free elections. The Taliban have been routed and their repression of the civilian Afghan population, particularly women, has ended. Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is a much weaker network of activists today than it was in 2001. Of course there are still other groups, cells and individuals looking to commit acts of terrorism against America and other targets, but there has been nothing on the scale of 9/11 since the Madrid train bombings of 2004 and the London transport bombs of 2005. In the long run, this argument goes, taking a hard line actually undercuts rather than stimulates support for terrorism and makes it much more difficult for terror groups to organize.

There are two other developments which may be instructive. One is the lack of any large-scale protests at the killing of bin Laden. There have been some small, symbolic demonstrations and threats from what remains of the al-Qaeda network, but there seems little if any emotional trauma or commitment amongst mainstream populations. This suggests that any pool of residual support is likely to be quite small.

The second is the ‘Arab Spring’ that began in December 2010 and has not yet run its course. Demonstrations, protests and rebellions against unpopular regimes and heads of state across the Middle East and North Africa toppled the leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and led to others declaring their intention to step down or making political and economic concessions. In Libya, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere, established regimes have used force to try to put down rebellions and the outcomes have yet to be decided. However, as far as can be ascertained, none of these protests are based on anything remotely close to the demands made by bin Laden. There is no clamour for worldwide jihad, restoration of a caliphate, creation of a global umma (Islamic community), the removal of American military bases from Muslim lands or violent attacks against Israel, all of which were called for by bin Laden (as can be seen in bin Laden’s 1998 World Islamic Front statement).What has spurred people to action is rising unemployment and low wages, high food prices, political corruption, the lack of democracy and civil rights, and a desire to see the end of autocratic rule.

The first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by global terrorism, but the second looks very different as movements for national renewal, focused on nation-states and political participation as well as economic issues, become more prominent. The unanswered question is whether that first decade really was exceptional and unrepeatable, or could it be early evidence, a taste of what the century has to offer?     

Chapter 23 on Nations, War and Terrorism is the natural place to start, especially pp. 1055-62 on terrorism. Then there are pp. 709-15 on religious fundamentalisms and pp. 1011-21 on types of social movement.

Philip W. Sutton

The huge (magnitude 9.0) Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami on 11^th March was the latest in a recent series of such ‘natural disasters’, from China (2008) and Pakistan (2008) to Indonesia (2004) and New Zealand (2011). The Japanese disaster has killed at least 10,000 people and injured 2,775, with another 17,500 still missing. Around 250,000 people have moved to temporary shelters as almost 150,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. [There is a dedicated site here.] The Fukushima nuclear site with its six nuclear reactors was badly damaged leading to increasing levels of radiation in the area. The Japanese government declared a 20km exclusion zone around the site and evacuated thousands of residents. People up to 30km away have been advised to stay indoors. Water supplies and vegetables in the Fukushima prefecture have become contaminated and many countries have banned all imports from the area. Activity in Japan’s ports, vehicle and other high-tech manufacturing plants have all been disrupted.

Natural disasters can have a profound impact on communities, societies and belief systems. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake (magnitude about 9.0) in Portugal devastated the city, leading to thousands of deaths, raging fires and the destruction of many important buildings. Thousands more were killed in Spain and Morocco. In the mid-eighteenth century, religious beliefs and arguments remained strong with many seeing the Lisbon quake as evidence of God’s anger. Philosophers of the European Enlightenment saw the sheer misery and destruction of Lisbon as an ‘excess’ of evil that could not be squared with the idea that we live ‘in the best possible world’ as described by Leibniz (1710). Some have argued that the Lisbon quake was a stimulus to secular, scientific endeavour, giving credence to scientific thinking over theology.

In spite of the devastating impact of recent natural disasters, there’s no sign yet that they are having anything like the same impact on people’s thinking and beliefs. One reason, of course, is that the dominant mode of explanation is now secular – science – and as far as I can tell we don’t have a better one which might challenge it. However, damage to the Fukushima nuclear site by the tsunami may well intensify a rapidly growing concern with energy security. How much energy do societies need? How can security of energy supply best be achieved? Is nuclear power part of the solution? Are renewable energy sources really capable of producing enough to enhance national energy security?

Several factors have brought energy security back into focus as an essential political problem. Between 2002 and 2007, oil prices trebled, peaking at US$140 per barrel by mid-2008. California experienced power blackouts as a result. Increasing attacks on oil production facilities in Nigeria and worries about possible terrorist attacks on energy facilities also played a part. However, in Europe, Russia’s cutting off of gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006 during a dispute over pricing, doubling the price of gas to Georgia and cutting gas to Belarus in 2007, laid bare the problem of the security of supply lines (Youngs 2009). Add in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, two Gulf Wars, current unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and forecasts that by 2030 – due to population growth and the rise of high consumption levels in India, China and other developing countries – the world will need 45 per cent more energy than it uses today, and it becomes clear that issues of energy production and security will be central to early twenty-first-century politics.

The issue is already particularly acute for Europe, which is the world’s largest energy importer. In 2006, the European Commission argued that Europe was at risk from its high dependence on energy imports from a small number of ‘unstable regions’. The Commission recommended a focus on internal reform of EU energy production and a turn towards renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectric power and, at the same time, a reconfiguring of EU foreign policy. The Scottish Government, for example, has made a commitment to meet 80 per cent of gross electricity consumption and 11 per cent of heat demand from renewable sources by 2020. However, so far there seems to be little chance of renewable energy being able to plug the potential European energy gap in order to strengthen security of supply. [See this site for more information.]

The steady rise of environmental awareness since the late 1970s has also applied a brake to some forms of energy. Coal-fired power stations are now out of favour, given the need to reduce carbon emissions to curb climate change and 59 stations were cancelled in the USA alone in 2007 (Luft and Korin 2009). Similarly, nuclear power presents its own, unique difficulties, not least start-up costs and how to dispose of nuclear waste. Long hated by environmentalists, nuclear power has recently undergone something of rehabilitation. Some environmental campaigners (as well as national governments) now see nuclear – which produces negligible amounts of CO₂– as one element in the kind of energy mix which will be needed if CO₂ emissions are to be reduced and global warming tackled effectively. But the dangers of nuclear reliance have been thrown into sharp relief by events at the Fukushima plant and it seems likely that advocates of nuclear power will not have things all their own way from now on.     

And there is an important caveat to this entire debate, which concerns the very concept of ‘energy security’ as set out above. In energy, as in economic development generally, there is inequality and diversity. Some countries, including Russia, USA and France are self-sufficient for electricity production but not transportation. Others, notably Brazil, are in the reverse position, in Brazil’s case due to its move to sugarcane ethanol for its transportation energy needs. Still others rely on imports for both electricity generation and transport which makes them even more vulnerable to shifts in energy prices and disruption caused by political or military actions. And we cannot forget that the biggest disparity of all is between the developed and developing countries. Around half of the global population is said to be in ‘energy poverty’, with no access at all to electricity with millions more suffering chronic unreliability of supply. If globalization became the key to understanding late twentieth-century developments, incorporating energy security into social science looks to be ‘the next big thing’.               

References

Luft, G. and Korin, A. (Eds) (2009) Energy Security Challenges for the 21^st Century: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger).  

Youngs, R. (2009) Energy Security (London: Routledge).

Chapter 5 ‘The Environment’ is the logical place to start with this one. Chapter 4 ‘Globalization and the Changing World’ also contains much material which sets this debate into a wider context as does Chapter 13 ‘Global Inequality’. 

Philip W. Sutton

Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia on 14^th January 2011 after mass protests and demonstrations calling for his immediate resignation and demanding freedom and jobs. In Egypt, President of thirty years Hosni Mubarak was forced from office on 11^th February after protests in Cairo and other cities, leaving the military in temporary control. Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya since 1969, is currently struggling to hang onto power through the wave of protests that has seen the second city, Benghazi, and much of the Eastern part of the country fall to opposition groups. Most commentators suggest that he will be forced out eventually. In Yemen, demonstrations have taken place and the President has announced he will not stand again nor will power pass to his son, and protests have also taken place in Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco. So far, Syria and Saudi Arabia seem to have escaped this wave of unrest. [See here for a BBC event timeline.]     

No one can fail to be surprised by the rapid spread of the protests across North Africa and the Middle East and the removal of long-established autocratic leaders and the collapse of governments. Who in 2010 seriously thought that by March 2011 Mubarak and probably Gaddafi would have been forced to stand down? But why now? Simmering resentment and desire for political change in this region have been reported by scholars for quite some time, but until recently there had been no triggering event that is almost always needed to turn those grievances into concerted action. 

Although there are some important differences between the national cases, there are also some similarities. The single act that tied the economic and political grievances together and set off the Tunisia protests was that of a young unemployed man – Mohamed Bouazizi – selling vegetables on the street in the town of Sidi Bouzid. When police stopped him from selling vegetables, in a desperate act Bouazizi set fire to himself and died later in hospital. However, the general underlying cause looks to be economic. Shrinking employment prospects, rising prices (particularly of food) and very visible inequality in a time of global economic recession and cutbacks have all been prominent amongst the protesters’ demonstrations. Decades of corruption, political exclusion and economic inequality seemed to be symbolized in a single suicidal act, which resonated right across the whole region.

In social movement theory terms, the Tunisia protesters were the ‘early risers’ in this cycle of political contention, taking the big risk of mounting a challenge. But once it became clear that the authoritarian regime had no legitimacy and the protest was more than a short-term outburst, other countries found themselves in a similar position. In some, such as Egypt, leaders were ousted without violence on the promise of free and fair elections. In Libya, though, Gaddafi’s regime fought back and estimates suggest more than 1,000 people have died in the fighting. The outcome in Libya and several other countries is unclear. However, the region as a whole has undoubtedly been changed forever and the placards and slogans of the whole movement are instructive, framing the protest as the pursuit of ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’.            

One argument I’ve heard numerous times during this wave of protest is that no one predicted it. This is a line I’ve used myself in teaching. In spite of all the research and theorizing about communism, I used to say, we were still surprised at the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and East European communism and nobody forecast it. Human action is changeable and unpredictable, and prediction is just not possible. But is this correct?

Consider the following passage from a much-maligned and criticized book that was seen by many as an apologia for aggressive American hegemony and neo-conservative US politics:

"The most remarkable development of the last quarter of the twentieth century has been the revelation of enormous weaknesses at the core of the world’s seemingly strong dictatorships … From Latin America to Eastern Europe, from the Soviet Union to the Middle East and Asia, strong governments have been failing over the last two decades. And while they have not given way in all cases to stable liberal democracies, liberal democracy remains the only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and cultures around the globe."

I admit, this is not a prediction of current events with dates and places attached, but its central contention has improved with age. This was Francis Fukuyama in the Introduction to his 1993 (p.xiii) book The End of History and the Last Man. In it, amongst other things, Fukuyama argued that we are at the end of history because the evolution of political systems has found its final, universal form in liberal democracy, which gives ordinary people something they crave: recognition. The remaining issue is when and how those societies that are not liberal democracies will become so. The current revolutions and protests in North Africa and the Middle East lend support to the thesis. [You can see Fukuyama’s original 1989 paper here.]

Fukuyama’s thesis is an excellent general forecast of current events, but where it falls down is precisely the suggestion that political history is at an end. There is a growing body of evidence in established democracies that liberal democracy no longer fulfils people’s basic desire for recognition. Low turnout in elections, disinterest amongst young people for the formal democratic process, loss of trust in politicians and the growth of direct action amongst those seeking social change, all of these suggest that liberal democracy is a convenient staging post rather than an endpoint to the desire for recognition. The main issue for the established democracies is whether existing systems can be reformed and reinvigorated or whether a different form of politics lies beyond the end of history.           

Chapter 22 on Politics, Government and Social Movements is the logical place to start reading around these issues, though Chapter 23 on War, Nations and Nationalism also covers nation-building and internal conflicts. Other places of interest are: pp. 41-6 on scientific sociology and pp. 542-64 on the prospects for economic development around the world.

Also of interest is a recently published book that offers a concise and accessible overview of theories of protest, why protests arise and how they go about changing societies: Hank Johnston’s States and Social Movements.

 

Philip W. Sutton

If you ask people ‘what is adulthood?’, they initially look at you as if you are asking a self evident question or have lost the plot. However, when they do respond, you soon find out people have pretty diverse ideas. The apparently simplest answer is the chronological one – you’re an adult when you reach eighteen years of age; but are you? You might be able to vote, legally drink alcohol in a pub and marry without parental consent, but at the tender age of ten you are ironically seen as responsible for your actions in a criminal court. Also, adults up until about the age of 24 receive less in social security benefits and wages than those over that age. So younger adults have all the responsibilities, but not all the rights, of all adults – not very fair really, is it?

For the Baby Boomer generation (those now aged mid 40s to mid 60s), adulthood was often characterized by living away from your family, having a job and a corresponding pay packet, or a family of your own; or for the elite few, going away to university. These experiences involved being financially, emotionally and geographically independent. For young people today, their early experiences of adulthood are very different. A vast proportion (over 40%) now attends university. However, because of state withdrawal of financial support, many have no choice but to live at home, attend a nearby university, work part time and/or seek financial support from their family. Only students from the most affluent families can afford to study at a distant university now, but they too are still dependent on their parents’ money. Those young adults who are ejected suddenly and often precariously into full independence are often those who are the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, such as those leaving care. There is also a far more flexible process to living independently than previously. Young adults may now work away or go away to university, but then may move back into the family home for a few years to save up for a house.

When young people today are asked what constitutes adulthood, their answers range from autonomy and self responsibility to responsibility for others and marriage, from independent thought to clubbing or criminal activity. Some older people view young adults today as irresponsible, glorified children who take no responsibility for themselves or others and still depend on their parents for everything, including money, hence the colloquial terms KIPPERS (kids in parents’ pockets eroding retirement savings), kidults and adultescents which you tend to see in media coverage. Others argue that high general unemployment and even higher youth unemployment, increasing university attendance and a succession of financial recessions from the 1970s onwards, have rendered young adulthood different and a much more unpredictable and uncertain time than for previous generations. Additionally, what seemed secure identity markers for past young adults, such as notions of masculinity and femininity, are also now increasingly unclear. So young adults today are not only struggling and juggling with the meaning of adulthood, meandering career paths and general identity uncertainty, but with what an adult man or woman should be like now. Should today’s young men be strong, driven and assertive or open with their emotions, caring and non sexist? Similarly, should young women be nurturing and family orientated or should they be self-focused and career orientated or both? In an increasingly multicultural society, people from different cultures have also brought different understandings of family and adulthood into the debate. Whilst  for some, adulthood is about living independently from their parents or alternatively relying on them for financial and emotional support, for others it is about bringing older parents to live with them, particularly if they are vulnerable and need support.

All of which raises interesting further questions (if it doesn’t necessarily provide answers) to the question ‘what is adulthood?’.

Lorraine Green

Lorraine Green is a trained sociologist and a qualified social worker. She is currently Lecturer in Social Work at Manchester University. Her recent book Understanding the Life Course combines the important insights sociology and psychology have to bring to the study of the life course, particularly illustrating their relevance to social work and welfare.