This collection of essays consists of twenty-five scholarly contributions by thirty academics in British studies, cultural studies, sociology and criminology, and urban studies. Recent legislation in Britain on the question of anti-social behaviour (Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003) is put into perspective by case studies. The contents are arranged into three thematic sections covering issues coming under the general headings of urban and public space, vulnerability and marginalization, recreation and leisure.
It is something of a challenge to compare late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century Britain with the late Victorian period, yet this comparative approach brings insights and depth of understanding to what has been labelled as anti-social behaviour, though this term is not as recent as might be thought: the first occurrence being attributed to Gladstone in 1887 (Harris, p. 21). The conclusions may serve as lessons for policy-makers today.
The comparisons highlight the difficulty of defining the term anti-social behaviour, as any definition carries a class basis and normative standards are regularly imposed by moral crusaders. They place the discussion in the framework of the Foucauldian paradigm of the taming of the masses by institutional violence and Ellias's theory of the civilizing process which, together, bring into play the notion of social constraints and codes of behaviour. Also at play are the Bourdieusian notion of a cultural elite (aristocracy) or a hierarchy of aesthetics. As Andrew Millie puts it: “There are clearly issues of power in who defines what is acceptable” (p. 105). Ultimately, it is the notion of power which permeates each contribution.
The power of the ruling classes (political or moral) to determine the legitimacy of expression and the limits of acceptable behaviour are taken from examples on the streets, at school (Beauvallet, Chapter 11), in places of entertainment such as racecourses (E. Roudaut, Chapter 20), music halls (J. Mullen, Chapter 21), and football grounds (James and Pearson, Chapter 25). The gamut of behaviour examined runs from rowdiness and rioting (Davie, Chapter 1; Morgner, Chapter 8), obscenity and blasphemy (Nash, Chapter 5), through rough-sleeping, loitering, and littering (Millie, Chapter 9), to drunkenness and drug use (Vleugels, Chapter 22; Talbot, Chapter 23; Blackman and Wilson, Chapter 24).
It is power too which is at the heart of the notion of empowerment, of giving voice to the voiceless, the powerless and the vulnerable and is central to the analysis of anti-social behaviour in many of the contributions. Such behaviour is not just a sign of a reversal of order, a charivari (the satirical Victorian weekly Punch's subtitle), but can be a critique of society (in the case of blasphemy, “challenges to Christianity” were seen as a danger to the Established Church, Nash, p. 54), or an escape from control and a repossession of public space. Thus, the street becomes a place where social hierarchy and deference cannot be assured, populated by people beyond the reach of constraints of “civilizing” influence of the clock, the workplace, the school, a fixed address: vagrants, idlers, vagabonds, the homeless (Harding and Irving, Chapter 13), nomads (Clerk and Taylor, Chapter 14), or populated by those who are publicly contesting the current order: student protests (Pickard, Chapter 7) where “public disorder [becomes] a legitimate form of protest” (p. 80), or anarchists (Bantman, Chapter 6). These people embodied the very opposite of the self-help, industrious and work-centred philosophy prevalent among the late Victorian middle-classes (Davie, Chapter 1; Roudaut, Chapter 20). Empowerment thus becomes an explanation for anti-social behaviour.
In their analysis of the 2010 student protests (Chapter 7) and the 2011 London riots (Chapter 8) both Pickard and Morgner redefine anti-social behaviour as a pro-social reaction to prevailing circumstances. The chapter on the “complexities and contradictions of ‘being’ anti-social in Northern Ireland” (Gormally, Chapter 15) also points to a similar conclusion where protest, discipline, and order are woven into complex reverse patterns.
The polarities that are evident in the contributions – order and disorder, morality and immoral behaviour, politeness and vulgarity – all contribute to determining what is tolerable at a given moment, in a given social and political context, and illustrate the degree to which tolerance and intolerance underline the fundamental premises of a given society. They thus underscore the degree to which communities, crowds, masses or individuals are deemed to threaten the status quo, necessitating regulation and intervention by the powers that be, in a complex reaction determined by the cultural norms of authoritative bodies, political and social, and the imperatives of responding to, as Stanley Cohen called it, moral panicsFootnote 1 – fanned by the media, instruments of social control for Bourdieu.Footnote 2
The link between inflated public scares and delinquency or “unacceptable conduct” (Pickard, p. 308) is not new. Several contributions examine the fear present in both periods that such behaviour would engender national degeneracy (Harris, Chapter 2; Flint and Powell, Chapter 4; Lassalle, Chapter 16). As Johnstone (Chapter 3) points out “what particularly links the Victorian and Blair eras was the concern with the use and perceived abuse of public space” (p. 31). Control of the streets in particular is a constant, and worries about gangs of idle youths were assuaged by enabling breaches of public order to be ruled on for the elastic definitions “loitering with intent”, and “indecent or obscene language”. Indeed, this betrays what Nash (Chapter 5) identifies as “policing of minor infractions to prevent major ones”, threatening society at large, feeding fear of a yobbish mob gaining control of the street and overturning the social and political set-up, by accident or conspiracy.
Theories on the underlying structural causes of anti-social behaviour and ways to mend society necessarily refer to urban segregation and social-class studies from the Chicago School of the 1920s–1930s. Transatlantic influences present in the policies introduced by the Blair government are well-documented for the later era from James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling's article “Broken Windows: Police and Neighborhood Safety” in the Atlantic Monthly (March 1982) to Mayor Giuliani's zero tolerance policy in New York (Millie, Chapter 9; Waiton, Chapter 17). The theory and notion of the “underclass” which permeated discourse in Britain the 1990s is also known to have originated with the work of Charles Murray, a US academic, feeding theories on the “dependency culture” created by the welfare state and benefits society (Lassalle, p. 193). While European influences on social and political reform at the end of the nineteenth century are recognized, what is less well-known and deserves attention is the transatlantic exchange of ideas, for example in socialist and anarchist circles or the academic community. At the theoretical level, if French theory is present (Bourdieu, Foucault), social-control theory in criminology and control theory in sociology might also have been discussed.
While similarities are detected between Britain at the end of the Victorian era and 100 years later, differences are also noted between the two periods. In the latter, in contrast with Victorian times, Flint and Powell (Chapter 4) identify a loosening of codes of behaviour, diminishing formality and allowing for less restraint. They also underline reverse trends in state or municipal involvement – growing in the former period and decreasing in the latter, indeed reverting to the trend for greater reliance on private philanthropic and charitable organizations, a throwback not to late Victorian philosophy but to the earlier Victorian period. Also to be noted as specific to the contemporary period is the increasing use of public surveillance and powers by the police to stop and search suspects of breeches of public order (James and Pearson, Chapter 25), or intrusion into the private sphere by government agencies and the media, imposing “family” values and the work ethic on those who remain outside the norm.
Finally, the book draws attention to the paradoxes of anti-social behaviour legislation, which ultimately reinforces an asocial and divisive society (Waiton, Chapter 17; Bell, Chapter 19) and exclusion, thus increasing rather than diminishing anti-social behaviour (policies to help the homeless, Harding and Irving, Chapter 13), and encouraging the view that anti-social behaviour is a cause, not a symptom of inequalities. It raises the question of the demonization of the poor (Squires, Chapter 18), where families are labelled as troubled rather than needy (Bond-Taylor, Chapter 12) and the onus is placed on individual responsibility rather than on general vulnerability. This engenders a corrective, sometimes punitive, approach designed to “educate” the individual (reform schools in the Victorian period, Baudry-Palmer, Chapter 10 and truancy, Beauvallet, Chapter 11) rather than a collective approach which addresses the underlying structural causes. Indeed those policies and strategies that have been set up in recent times – Troubled Families Programme, local efforts to deal with homelessness or to respond to gypsy and traveller needs – have been counter-productive and have reinforced the marginalization of the marginalized (Bond-Taylor, Chapter 12; Harding and Irving, Chapter 13; Clark and Taylor, Chapter 14).
Comparisons between different time periods are frequently called for, but often fail when actually attempted. This book is an example of how such a comparative endeavour can succeed. It combines detailed scholarship on specific cases, showing how social history and sociology enlighten each other with contemporary questions, and, together with the bibliography, provides an excellent starting point for any further historical work on deviance and marginality.
