Law, Community and the 2011 London Riots

Can local communities on the margins of society be charged with the responsibility of maintaining their own social order? What type of law (if any) can bring social order to these communities? Using semi-structured interviews with social workers, police officers, lawyers and other professionals familiar with the Tottenham riots, this chapter offers an inside view into what community means in a rundown London suburb and how it is linked to law, justice, social order and identity. The interviews will help us to tease out the empirical complexity of the interplay between the public political discourse on community, the everyday reality of those who live and work in areas such as Tottenham and social order. They will also allow us to explore Roger Cotterrell’s idea of community as a source of self-governance and law.