Compare and contrast two explanations of social disorder in contemporary UK society.
In modern society, lives are ordered by Rules and Regulations. Our behaviour is dictated by them and breaking the Law results in penalties. Over the years, “disorderly behaviour” has become a big issue and many scientists attempted to explain what is the reason for disobeying those rules. Massive research lead to many theories analysing this problem. This essay presents two explanations of social disorder in the modern society of United Kingdom, based on researches of Stuart Hall and L. Rowell Huesmann.
In published in 1978 “Policing the Crisis”, Stuart Hall et al. (as cited in Kelly and Toynbee, 2009) developed a theory, that the cause of the anti-social behaviour is the way the media interpret and popularise existing state definitions. Hall's theory has it's roots in a research based on the observations made in the 1970's, when following radical changes in preventing crime and violence, media exaggerated the information making the intervention look like it was in breach of racial equality. The main problem addressed by this theory is the street crime. Hall et al. point of view is, that street crime has always been present. In their publication, Hall et al. highlighted the issue of “mugging” in 1970's Britain as one of the examples. The introduction of the term “mugging” in UK was observed and studied by Hall and his colleagues. While in US the term was related to the the street crime involving black people and ghettos, media in UK “adapted” it to the British reality and included other street crimes in description. (Kelly & Toynbee, 2009)
“Mugging” has been understood as a symbol of race, crime and youth and while it has been “imported” from US with this label, it soon resulted with the response associated with “anti-crime, anti-black and anti-liberal” orientation in UK. The response, which itself became a base for a moral panic. “Mugging” has became a threat to...