This essay reconstructs the normative core of the recent European riots, when young rebels reacted to the disregard for their civic claims to equal treatment. Referring to the available data and facts, the essay uses the example of the two biggest riots in contemporary French and British history to show that prevailing analyses only grasp certain aspects of these events: these riots were primarily neither ‘race riots’, ‘issueless riots’ nor ‘riots of defective consumers’. Nourished in particular by experiences with the (...) police and the school system in the urban districts from which the rioters recruited, rage was directed against the symbols and embodiments of a state that has failed to live up to its promise of equality. It is the everyday undermining of the principle of their equality as citizens and the physically experienced violation of minimum constitutional standards that best explain the motivations of those participating in the riots. (shrink)

The advent of the ‘mega’ or world city seems inseparable from the ambivalent and transient experience of modernity – the ideals of liberty, individuality, property, accelerating progress, and, for many, the realities of immobility, anonymity, poverty, and arresting regression. When more than half of the global population pursues an existence within an urban frame, the densities and boundaries of urban spaces swell to fantastical proportions. With the vast increase in size, so the experiences and expectations of the city become more (...) pronounced and profound. This introduction to this special issue of Thesis Eleven, ‘Big City Blues’, discusses the themes and stories of the articles below, which present different aspects of life in the metropolis. The over-stimulation of the desensitized urbanite, the wandering flâneur who fortifies him/her self against fragmenting pressures, the explosion of everyday peace into riots, the battles for political and social recognition of identity and property rights, and the financial meltdown of an entire municipal institution, are just some of the things that take place in the modern city, and are explored here. (shrink)