Thursday, 19 October 2006

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Classifying incivilities (I hardly know you - sod off) Earlier this year Urban studies published the results of an Australian survey into 'everyday life incivility.' The authors, Timothy Phillips and Philip Smith, observed that 'No longer trivial, incivility has been inserted into a discourse of crisis and is taken to be an index of catastrophic civic decline.' Among their more interesting conclusions was that 'respectable' people were the most likely perpetrators of an everyday incivility.* Also this summer we had the 'New Urban Politeness Index', a Reader's Digest survey of cities, blogged here by Matthew Kahn. I've even tinkered with the topic meself. And today the Home Office has published figures on anti-social behaviour which include the following unspectacular statistic: 'Between 2003-04 and 2004-05 there was also a small but significant increase in the proportion of people who perceived people being insulted, pestered or intimidated to be a problem (from 11% in 2003-04 to 12% in 2004-05).' Of course, fascination with rudeness is not new and I'm sure it wasn't in Shakespeare's day. But what may be new is the sharpness of the media-policy focus on it, which as Phillips and Smith imply, suggests a new kind of widespread concern verging on preoccupation. Is there really a common cultural trend here? Jan Steyaert, in his chapter in the forthcoming Respect in the neighbourhood which I commend to you politely, argues that it is not so much that we are experiencing an increase in incivility, but that our societies are less tolerant of diversity of behaviour. (I should add that with characteristic insight he anticipates the current issues to do with ethnic and religious costume and social cohesion). A key thrust of the book (published next month, blurb link to follow soon) is that social relations at the neighbourhood level are a crucial and unacknowledged component in the perception and practice of respect. It's interesting to ask what there is in common between disrespect by a stranger in a public place, and incivility from an acquaintance. Personally I find it much easier to deal with an instance of rudeness or disrespect from a stranger than from someone I know - indeed the latter can be emotionally scalding, presumably because we've invested more emotional energy in friendships. For people who suffer from temperamental indecisiveness in relationships, the forcefulness that others may feel they need to use to make a point can be disturbing. If we take this a little further, noting that the Home Office survey asks about instances of anti-social behaviour within a 15 minute walk of the home (which would be a generous interpretation of neighbourhood) there are subtleties of acquaintanceship and we have to take into account the crucial difference between friendship and neighbourliness. Friendliness, a key component of positive neighbouring, is by no means the same thing as friendship. There may be good psychological reasons why we seldom mix friendship with neighbouring. As our knowledge of other people increases - until an association reaches a degree of closeness - the greater the likelihood that we will discover...
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Young people and anti-social behaviour again: against structure Suddenly it's yoof crime and violence again. The youth justice system, as if we didn't know it, is 'in crisis.' Elsewhere in government there is a creative and positive approach to issues to do with arson and young people. Never thought about it much? Nor me, in spite of a clear recollection of the power of Peter Shaffer's Equus which I saw back in the seventies... According to this press release, children and young people on the lowest incomes are sixteen times more likely to die in a house fire and 31 times more likely to suffer from an arson attack. So one hopes the DCLG's proactive initiative, acknowledging the link between youth crime and arson, has a chance of making a difference. And while I'm writing this, having been unable to get there, ippr are having a gig at the House of Commons to pump some momentum into youth policy, launching their report Freedom’s orphans: raising youth in a changing world. The press release unpromisingly introduces the word ‘paedophobia’ in its title (which helps explain why I missed it first time round) but we learn that 'British adults are less likely than those in other European countries to intervene to stop teenagers committing anti social behaviour.' Right, we're on familiar territory. The inclination to intervene and the fear of retaliation were the key themes of the seminar I organised back in January which sparked the chapters by Jacqueline Barnes and Liz Richardson in Respect in the neighbourhood, which will be published next month. The book is really about informal social control at local level. There have been a few surveys (including I recall this one by a certain security company, with slightly unconvincing methodology) but we can expect the ippr work to be authoritative. The press release offers enticing sample statistics about readiness to intervene. I hope when I see the report I'll find some exploration of the possibility that what young people themselves tend to fear most on the streets is not adults, it's other young people. It seems important, and overdue, for someone influential to at last come out and show clearly that there are social shifts to explain changes in the relationships between young people and those around them, for which young people are not necessarily to blame. But had I been there, I might have raised a point, which was put to me most clearly by our publisher Geoffrey Mann (who's been working in this field far longer than I and long enough to remember Equus I'm sure), to ask who is challenging the policy insistence on structured activities? Not ippr: their report claims 'that participation in structured youth activities is better for young people than unstructured youth clubs,' and recommends 'that every secondary school pupil (from 11-16 years old) should participate in at least two hours a week of structured and purposeful extracurricular activities.' Most youth workers and others providing various types of informal education are not against structured activities, far from it. It's...

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