In this startling look at evil behavior, a UCLA sociologist tries to get inside the criminal psyche to understand what it means or feels, signifies, sounds, tastes, or looks like to do any particular crime.

Starting from a re-assessment of the relevance of the situationist analysis of riots in the 1960s to the riots in 2011, and finding their analysis largely irrelevant, this paper argues for an interpretative framework derived from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Using Hegel’s concepts of the Good, the Bad, the state and wealth, the categories of noble and ignoble or base consciousness emerge as attitudes towards social phenomena with a strong explanatory relevance to the recent riots. Drawing upon Kojeve and Hyppolite’s (...) readings of the Phenomenology, the argument is that the riotous looting of 2011 lacked all the elements of combat, challenge and struggle for recognition which would make of them a sovereign gesture and a historical episode. Instead, they embodied an abjection before the culture of the commodity which makes of them not a demand for mastery but a continuation of slavery. Given this, the view of the sub-proletarian proposed by Pasolini in the 1970s offers a descriptive analysis which perhaps also explains the current vogue for the language of the feral underclass, whilst demonstrating that such an analysis is not the sole property of Conservative Justice ministers, and can be distinguished from the latter by the connection it makes between antisocial amorality at the top of society and its repetition at the bottom. (shrink)

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers--not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists--violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view in Violence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule--regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations. -/- Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and ethnography (...) to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen--and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord--from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder--and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence. (shrink)

In this book, he also demonstrates a skill shared by the greatest radical thinkers: to reveal positions we've been taught to think of as extremism to be emanations of simple human decency and common sense.

In early August 2011, disturbances broke out in a number of English cities. What happened was broadcast globally, and all of a sudden it seemed as if all of the country was about to burst into flames. This short paper is offered by way of a ‘letter’ from England. It was written in late August 2011 and is an initial attempt to develop an understanding of why the disturbances broke out, what motivated the people who were involved and, indeed, why (...) things were confined to England. Cities elsewhere in Britain experienced nothing. The paper identifies a crisis in the English social imaginary. The disturbances are understood as a conjunctural response to this crisis, a response highlighting the interregnum in the English social imaginary. (shrink)

Britain’s August riots were an explosion bound sooner or later to happen. Just like a minefield: one knows that some of the explosives will, true to their nature, sooner or later explode, but one doesn’t know where and when. In the case of a social minefield, however, an explosion is likely to spread instantaneously, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in the ‘real time’ and prompting the ‘copy-cat’ effect. This particular social minefield was created by the combination of consumerism with (...) rising inequality. This was not a rebellion or an uprising of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority but a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers, people offended and humiliated by the display of riches to which they had been denied access. (shrink)