Critical Consumers Run Riot in Manchester

Abstract

This article attempts to unpack the manner in which the “shopping riots” narrative – a narrative of consumerism gone awry which became increasingly prominent in the popular characterisation of the 2011 riots – was operationalized. In doing so, we look to uncover the political saliences of the riots which this discursive terrain conceals. Whilst it is unsurprising that the violence which the riots staged met ritual denunciation, the historical significance of this rebuke lies in its discrediting of the riots as putatively lacking in any protest motive or grievance. The considerable stress laid on the imagery of looting alongside explanatory motifs of nihilism, vulgar materialism and gratuitous criminality all foregrounded a hubristic consumerist drive absent of an intelligible political subjectivity. Through specific reference to the riots as they transpired in Manchester, four related points of discussion will be adopted in critically assessing this portrayal of the riots as apolitical consumerism. We ask: (a) how does this framing result in the eliding of institutional and structural circumstances (e.g. police relations and labour market factors); (b) to what extent does such a characterisation of crass materialism borrows from already established racialised mappings of urban pathology; (c) what is the ideological status of the policy response which this characterisation licences; (d) and finally, how might we consider the political legitimacy of the riots from within the interpretative terrain of consumerism itself.