Fuels, sparks and fires

Abstract

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.