Transparency & Visible (Dis)Order: Surveillance and the Riots

This paper links the UK riots of August 2011 to citizenship and the subject through the lens of risk and resilience. It suggests that the rhetoric of responsibilisation and observational techniques/tactics in response to the riots reveal a moral ordering of the ‘legitimate’ citizen/subject at odds with the rheotric of inclusive resilience. The visibility of the disorderly citizen was used to objectify the 'risky subject'; turning the riots from a societal reaction (to the negative impacts of neoliberalization) into wanton criminality inherent to the 'worst 100,000 families' in Britain. This paper situates the disorderly and 'risky' citizen/subject within a critical reflection on risk, order and surveillance. It is argued that a complex interplay of thinking, doing and acting out citizenship forms tendential links between risk and surveillance that scholars need to investigate further.