oh shit
Well-Known Member
thinking out loud...
what makes normal, ordinary, decent people respect the law? why is it that we accept the presence of a police force and allow it to patrol, observe, question and arrest other people?
traditionally, marxists might argue that it is simply class, ie one's position in the hierarchical economic structure of society. that arguement is evident in some posts here.
but other posts have demonstrated that it is not quite that simple. many people come from 'sink' estates and never commit a crime, never join the local paramilitaries (my dad for example), some learn the knowledge required to climb the socio-economic ladder, some do not.
what is it that people share then that leads them to respect the law? it's not the social contract theory - how many of us ever sat down one day and agreed to a contract with the state, as locke and rosseau et al theorise it?
for adorno and horkheimer, the marxist focus on economy is limited. instead, they argue it is mass popular culture itself, 'the culture industry', that has the affect on mass popular conciousness, and reproduces values, 'norms' and structures of domination (be they economic, racial, or gendered).
and for michel foucault it went further - not only does mass culture reproduce values and norms, but the institutions of society from schools to mental hospitals to prisons, all seeking to know the individual, catagorise them, and normalise them. these processes produce the 'governmentality', that is, the mentality of people who allow themselves to be governed.
now there is statistical evidence available for ireland which demonstrates clearly that the police and justice institutions are concentrated on petty economic crime. in 1997 a call for 'zero tolerance' was made - in that year 100 prosecutions were taken against beggars. in 2000 the figure was 1,069
(http://www.policyinstitute.tcd.ie/bessvrfs.php). has begging increased that much in three years? or is there a concentration on producing favourable crime-reduction statistics that focus on an available and visible group in society?
and what other group or 'type of criminal' might be more visible than others?
in 1995, the coucil of europe's committee for the prevention of torture was strongly critical of the gardai's handling of persons in custody. the wheelock case has received media attention but the less-known statistics demonstrate that the police in ireland are quite brutal with arrestees. it is not controversial to argue then that a lot of people do not regard the police as something to respect or co operate with, and conversely that the police view some detainees as more deserving of brutality than others. what could be the cause of that mentality?
if we go back to the ideas of culture producing conciousness, and institutions defining and producing the normal, and the 'others', where can we imagine the role of the 'scumbag'?
is it in a cultural identity that cannot rely on certain aspirations of status? that, as aoife suggested, relates to a different conception of nationalism and the irish national 'struggle'? that will not tolerate the 'enemy', the orangemen, in the republic?
and as people who are already opposed to the gardai because they are already the subjects of the gardai's attention and violence, is it surprising that when one hated group defends the other with force they would react with force?
i would say there was no political conciousness behind the action of rioting, but rather that it was a violent meeting between two different cultural identities in the newly affluent ireland, the orange parade was the catalyst, and the police were in the middle because that's where they've always been, that's what they exist for.
the interesting thing now,.for me, is watching the dominant culture trying to come to terms with it.
what makes normal, ordinary, decent people respect the law? why is it that we accept the presence of a police force and allow it to patrol, observe, question and arrest other people?
traditionally, marxists might argue that it is simply class, ie one's position in the hierarchical economic structure of society. that arguement is evident in some posts here.
but other posts have demonstrated that it is not quite that simple. many people come from 'sink' estates and never commit a crime, never join the local paramilitaries (my dad for example), some learn the knowledge required to climb the socio-economic ladder, some do not.
what is it that people share then that leads them to respect the law? it's not the social contract theory - how many of us ever sat down one day and agreed to a contract with the state, as locke and rosseau et al theorise it?
for adorno and horkheimer, the marxist focus on economy is limited. instead, they argue it is mass popular culture itself, 'the culture industry', that has the affect on mass popular conciousness, and reproduces values, 'norms' and structures of domination (be they economic, racial, or gendered).
and for michel foucault it went further - not only does mass culture reproduce values and norms, but the institutions of society from schools to mental hospitals to prisons, all seeking to know the individual, catagorise them, and normalise them. these processes produce the 'governmentality', that is, the mentality of people who allow themselves to be governed.
now there is statistical evidence available for ireland which demonstrates clearly that the police and justice institutions are concentrated on petty economic crime. in 1997 a call for 'zero tolerance' was made - in that year 100 prosecutions were taken against beggars. in 2000 the figure was 1,069
(http://www.policyinstitute.tcd.ie/bessvrfs.php). has begging increased that much in three years? or is there a concentration on producing favourable crime-reduction statistics that focus on an available and visible group in society?
and what other group or 'type of criminal' might be more visible than others?
in 1995, the coucil of europe's committee for the prevention of torture was strongly critical of the gardai's handling of persons in custody. the wheelock case has received media attention but the less-known statistics demonstrate that the police in ireland are quite brutal with arrestees. it is not controversial to argue then that a lot of people do not regard the police as something to respect or co operate with, and conversely that the police view some detainees as more deserving of brutality than others. what could be the cause of that mentality?
if we go back to the ideas of culture producing conciousness, and institutions defining and producing the normal, and the 'others', where can we imagine the role of the 'scumbag'?
is it in a cultural identity that cannot rely on certain aspirations of status? that, as aoife suggested, relates to a different conception of nationalism and the irish national 'struggle'? that will not tolerate the 'enemy', the orangemen, in the republic?
and as people who are already opposed to the gardai because they are already the subjects of the gardai's attention and violence, is it surprising that when one hated group defends the other with force they would react with force?
i would say there was no political conciousness behind the action of rioting, but rather that it was a violent meeting between two different cultural identities in the newly affluent ireland, the orange parade was the catalyst, and the police were in the middle because that's where they've always been, that's what they exist for.
the interesting thing now,.for me, is watching the dominant culture trying to come to terms with it.
!ninjaaaa
