In his book "Le temps des émeutes", Alain Bertho argues that globalization does not only affect economic exchange. The riot, social phenomenon that we often wrongly reduce to a one-off and isolated event, is developing all over the world. In view of the pastten years, according to Alain Bertho, no country is immune to these outbreaks of violence. The record of events reveals a great diversity of causes and profiles: political upheavals, overflows with the death of a young person, communal clashes, suburban crisis, riots following a price increase and so on. However, the author says, as much as these events are short and violent, they are quickly relegated to the shadows of history. It is therefore necessary both to recall the novelty, to measure the extent and especially to understand its meaning.
A first common feature of many riots today is their urban location. The city is where took place all the land issues. However, because they can produce stigma and forced mobility, renewal policies are undermining the social cohesion and sharpened tensions.
At a time when capitalism digests somehow its financial follies, the struggle for decent living conditions is another common characteristic.
The youthful character of the people protesting is also remarkable. High-profiled, thanks tothe Internet in particular, the riots are to be finally understood as an expression of discontent.
They sign the end of modern politics into a period where, all over the world, states recombine their actions and where global governance has effects in the lives of all of us.
But the riot is not only a symptom of crisis, it also carries a strong demand, namely the possibility of communication through channels other than those of traditional institutions. It remains to find the forms of this dialogue so that, finally, the violence is no longer the main way to tell his anger and protest against the world as it goes.
International Observatory on Suburbs and Outskirts
With the French anthropologist Sylvain Lazarus, Alain Bertho has founded in 2008 l'Observatoire international des banlieues et des périphéries and produces researches in France, Brazil and Senegal.
