UK RIOTS Explaining the riots is indeed to in some sense excuse them. Explain them anyway.

In spite of the chaos that swept Britain last week, there was one noticeably robust theme that dominated discourse in the media. Throughout their engagements with the public and array of statements, our governments officials seemed to be constructing a distinction between two approaches to the looting. The choice was apparently between assigning responsibility to those committing the acts on the one hand, and invoking a causal explanation of their behaviour that dissolved them of blame on the other. Boris Johnson was the first keen to push this distinction, saying he was sick of hearing social justifications for what he deemed to be mindless criminal behaviour. It also seemed implicit in Camerons insistence upon labelling the looting acts of pure criminality, thus barring the possibility of discussing the causes. But for conclusive proof that this was an orchestrated government line we need look no further than its third appearance, in the spat that unfolded between Michael Gove and Harriet Harman on Newsnight. When the latter began to suggest reasons for why the looting was taking place, Gove attacked her for offering what he claimed to be excuses for criminal behaviour. Gove was so keen to portray Harman as a sympathiser with the looters that as she went on to speculate that government cuts would be the source of at least a partial explanation, he asked her whether she condemned the looting as he did. Despite having already done so, she was compelled to again. Why was the Education Secretary playing dumb, pretending he didnt know the difference between justifying the looting - endorsing it - and explaining the activity - understanding it? When a fireman suggests a short-circuit can rightly be labelled the cause of a fire, he doesnt also thereby suggest that it was a good thing and hes glad it happened. Likewise, isnt it obvious that we can stand united in condemning the looting without subsequently sacrificing our right to ask, as social scientists do, what led to that behaviour in the first place? Apparently not, if the government was to be believed. But I suspect their reasons for pushing this approach arent as obvious and simply cynical as we might expect. Of course their wanting to silence suggestions that their fiscal policy was a contributing factor was one motivation, but surely a second source of their position was a problem deeply rooted in reflection upon our feelings. Namely, the simultaneous desire to both hold criminals responsible, and also to understand what drove them to act the way they did. And I suspect that we all, deep down, fear that these urges may turn out to conflict, and we do our best to pretend the tension isnt there by suppressing one intuition in favour of the other. We want to yell at the yobs; they consciously decided to walk out onto the streets and smash up our shops! But then we also know we can tell an approximate story about most of their lives without even looking at them: poverty, unemployment, lack of qualifications and an unstable upbringing no doubt did their part in bringing those people to where they are today. And that ability to predict whos going to turn to crime worries us, because it threatens to make our apportioning of blame start to feel like a sham. Perhaps Gove was right to identify explanation with offering excuses after all. Yet interestingly, the government soon dropped this dogmatic line and joined the Left in having their cake and eating it: they continued to condemn the anarchy and insist responsibility began and ended with the looters, but Cameron also started to talk of a sick society that needed a remedy, thus conceding there is a social context to the acts after all which needs to be understood. I think theres a solution to this delicate balancing act, and it lies in admitting there is some sort of dual narrative going on. We need to realise that we can view the looting in two ways: firstly, as fellow humans

with livelihoods we would be distraught to see destroyed. But also, secondly - and this is the crucial perspective the government began by ignoring - as fellow citizens and legislators, assigned with the task of designing policy on the basis of evidence about cause and effect. I think it is from the first perspective that the retributive, emotional urges that plague the Daily Mail are entirely justified. We cant help but be disgusted at what we saw. But we also need to spare time for the detached viewpoint, where we suspend the emotion and blame and instead stand back, assessing what sociological phenomena led to the activity of the last week. If you were personally affected by the looting, this second task and the distancing it requires may prove very difficult. But politicians and commentators would do well to realise that there is a role for both condemning and explaining, and the latter is just as important as the former.