The 2005 French Urban Unrests: Data‐Based Interpretations

In: Sociology compass, Band 2, Heft 4, S. 1287-1302

Abstract

AbstractThe French 2005 riots in the urban outskirts were the most numerous, widespread and violent France has experienced since the beginning of the 1980s. In The Politics of Collective Violence, Charles Tilly refused the term 'riot as a scientific idiom' because it embodies a political judgment rather than an analytical distinction. Authorities and observers label as riots the damage‐going gatherings of which they disapprove, but they use terms like demonstrations, protest, resistance or retaliation for essentially similar events of which they approve (2003, 18).Our aim here is to discuss this assertion. How far is violence an act of protest? How far can the authors of collective violence acting in the French deprived urban areas in November 2005 be described as 'rioters' or rebels? The following contribution mainly focuses on empirical data (quantitative and qualitative) in order to fulfil this aim. We will leave the root causes and contextual aspects by one side (economic deprivation, urban segregation, conflicts with police forces, etc.) and concentrate on immediate data produced in the wake of the riots, in the little research produced afterwards.