Poverty, Bombs and Riots: Social Divisions in search of a Discourse.

This paper explores some of the ways in which contemporary economic and demographic changes are interacting to produce new forms of social disorder and political power. Drawing in particular on Foucault and on Marxism, it is argued that the intensification of global capitalism promoted by neoliberalism, coupled with world population growth and greater demographic mobility, is producing a particular conjunction of forces in which governments are experimenting with new forms of power. Prominent among them are greater bureaucratic and market discipline, as well as renewals of ideological and repressive strategies. The claims advanced here are illustrated by discussions in the second part of the paper of events and forms of power in Britain and France. In the UK, the focus is on debates over Faith Schools; responses to domestic terrorism; policies towards those whose lives are classified as chaotic and a recent shift away from multiculturalism towards concerns about integration and ideological experiments with new notions of Britishness. In the French context the paper considers explanations for the recent riots in the banlieues and the student demonstrations that followed them. The claim here is that underlying economic and demographic changes on a global, structural level are motivating similar solutions across Western states, in the pursuit of new forms of power. Finally, the paper argues that social critics need to trace in detail the genealogy of these new forms, in particular regarding their effects on everyday life and agency, and to evaluate them in light of the changing sociology of contemporary geopolitical forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]