While pondering acts of street violence it is worth remembering that whatever action the government takes, it will be solidly aimed at containment. Containment becomes institutionalised as it always has to be, yet government containment does generate its own rewards for the governing classes.
At a lower level we see a preference for containment in the way demonstrations are handled in the UK. Instead of water cannon and rubber bullets we see a much milder form of containment which ensures two things. Firstly there will be other demonstrations. Secondly, visible acts of police containment suggest that something is being done.
We see something similar with illegal drug use. Less clear cut, but containment is the preferred option. In this case the obvious advantage of containment is the occasional big win as a major drugs consignment is intercepted - something is being done. Another advantage is the constant trickle of less dramatic stories which again suggest that something is being done.
The effect is not dissimilar to the attraction of gambling, the compulsive lure of intermittent rewards B.F. Skinner wrote about. With containment we see intermittent indications that something is being done. As with gambling, there is also a suggestion of the big win for punters, or voters as we sometimes call them. The big political win is just around the corner when elections are just around the corner.
It keeps enough voters voting, gambling on the big win, the perpetual hope that a really major reform may be pushed through even though it never is. It never will be because the dice are loaded.
2 comments:
There was a Marxist theory of crime which maintained that the police are not there to eliminate crime, but to manage it. It's fine, all good for the economy, impossible to eradicate, so let's make sure that it doesn't hit the capitalists' bottom line.
That's probably a bit too much like a conspiracy for my liking, but law enforcement bureaucracies and employees obviously don't want to get rid of law-breaking. Instant redundancy! Having a bit of disorder is good because it lets off steam. If you have been driving up to London every Saturday to wave a placard and shout, you'll probably be a bit knackered when it comes to setting off bombs and sabotaging the economy. And there does seem to be a very strong fear in the UK establishment that if they act too strongly, they could provoke a backlash that they are unable to control.
That's especially true with regard to the current situation. Football hooligans don't really have much in the way of group loyalty, and they are a tiny group of hard-core nutters. So they can be baton-charged. If you get that rough with Muslims, though, you will find yourself outnumbered by huge numbers of their co-religionists, and will then have to use military tactics that prove your previous policy of benign multiculturalism was a terrible mistake.
Sam - these things seem to settle into a pattern which can be managed, which benefits the managers and does work in the sense that things don't quite fall apart in embarrassing ways. But it seems to leave us with a bureaucratic culture where nothing needs to be resolved. Maybe this is why a policy of benign multiculturalism was not seen as a terrible mistake before it became obvious.
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