Confronting the reality of anti-social behaviour
| Author | Sadie Parr |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480609336501 |
| Published date | 01 August 2009 |
| Date | 01 August 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Theoretical Criminology
© The Author(s), 2009
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Vol. 13(3): 363–381; 1362–4806
DOI: 10.1177/1362480609336501
Confronting the reality of anti-social
behaviour
S A D I E PA R R
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Abstract
A significant body of thinking around the UK Government’s anti-
social behaviour (ASB) policy agenda draws its inspiration from post-
Foucauldian governmentality theory. This is an indispensable body
of work that has been particularly productive when grounded in
empirical research studies which have critically analysed the way
governmental rationalities are translated into policy ‘on the ground’.
This article argues, however, that there is a need to move beyond
‘the social construction of reality’ thesis prevalent in this approach
and direct our attention to ontologically focused questions. It
contends that critical realism could effectively complement
governmentality perspectives and deepen our understanding of ASB
policy by enabling researchers to move beyond a focus on the
‘construction’ of ASB to the ‘reality’ of ASB.
Key Words
anti-social behaviour • critical realism • governmentality • policy making
Introduction
In a challenge to the UK Conservative Party’s dominance in the area of crime
and disorder, New Labour picked up on the issue of anti-social behaviour
(ASB) in the mid-1990s when it was brought to the attention of politicians by
the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group (Burney, 1999; Gilling,
2007). Following their election success in 1997, the New Labour government
subsequently propelled the issue to the top of the UK’s political agenda
despite the absence of a comprehensive body of empirical data on the nature
363
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and extent of the problem (Prior, 2009). The Party proceeded to establish an
ever-increasing raft of legal sanctions to control a wide range of criminal and
non-criminal acts (including loud music, dropping litter, soliciting, drunken
behaviour, taking drugs and verbal abuse) encompassed within the catch-all
term ‘anti-social behaviour’. Similar, though not identical, policy agendas
have been introduced in other countries, including the United States, to address
concerns variously labelled as incivilities, public disorder and ‘quality of life’
offences (Beckett and Herbert, 2007; Gilling, 2007).
The stimulus for this article is derived from my own experience over the last
six years of carrying out both government-funded and independent research
into New Labour’s policy response to ASB and, in the process, thinking about
how we might explain the emergence of the ‘problem’,1 evaluate the contem-
porary governance of this behaviour and offer an ‘alternative vision’ (Hughes,
2007) about how things might be done differently.
During this period, academic commentary on the subject has grown
apace in line with the issue’s steady rise to the top of the political agenda.
Yet despite a burgeoning literature on the ASB policy problem, scholarly
analysis is still in its relative infancy with the most developed body of think-
ing around the policy field drawing its inspiration from post-Foucauldian
governmentality theory. Although this remains an indispensable body of
work, my motivation to undertake this article was driven by my perception
of the need to counter ‘the social construction of reality’ thesis prevalent in
this approach that works to limit the formulation of normative claims
regarding the ‘real’ nature of policy and its effects.
The article begins with an overview of the concept of ‘governmentality’
before going on to explore how it has been employed in studies of ASB. The
second section of the article then critically analyses the benefits and limita-
tions of this approach. It argues that although work in the governmentality
field offers important insights, it leaves a number of issues unexamined in
understanding the governance of conduct. Many of these problems arise
from a lack of engagement with questions of ontology and a distrust of
causal analysis. With these shortcomings in mind, the third section of the
article argues that critical realism could effectively complement governmen-
tality approaches and deepen our understanding of ASB policy by enabling
researchers to move beyond a focus on the ‘construction’ of ASB to the ‘reality’
of ASB. While this article is not intended to be primarily focused on an appli-
cation of critical realism to the study of ASB policy, the final section tries to
anchor the arguments within the context of a specific example. The article
concludes by arguing that the theoretical and conceptual resources of critical
realism strengthen the ‘diagnostic value’ of governmentality studies and thereby
enhance our understanding of the governance of ASB.
The governmentality approach
Governmentality studies seek to understand the way individuals are governed
and govern themselves. They are concerned with the how of governing, how
Parr—Confronting the reality of anti-social behaviour
365
power and knowledge are exercised (Dean, 1999). Many have conceived of
the term ‘governmentality’ as being based on the semantic merger of Foucault’s
notion of ‘government’ with ‘mentality’ or ‘modes of thought’ (Dean, 1999;
Lemke, 2001). In this way, ‘governmentality’ is first concerned with how we
think about governing. The discursive aspect of this is important in the
acknowledgement that before power can be exercised, its objects need to be
defined and boundaries established. This involves the ‘problematization’ of
certain conduct and populations. Governmentality is concerned, however, not
only with forms of representation which mark out discursively the field
within which ‘problems’ are made ‘thinkable’ (Rose, 1990), but also with the
technique or interventions designed to tackle it. Indeed, the two are deemed
inseparable: it is not possible to study the technologies of government with-
out an analysis of the governmental rationalities underpinning them, and
which allow us to govern and be governed (Rose, 1996). Second, govern-
mentality points to the way in which Foucault uses the term ‘government’. In
this usage ‘government’ does not possess just a political meaning referring to
‘the State’, governmental bodies or organizations or to the direct exercise of
power by them. Rather, ‘government’ goes beyond political forms of power
and occurs on a continuum which extends from self-regulation or ‘technologies
of the self’ to ‘governing others’ through more political, formal government
(Garland, 1997; Dean, 1999; Lemke, 2001).
Governmentality also refers to the emergence of a distinctly new form of
thinking about and exercising power that came to predominate over other
types of power in Western Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries
(Garland, 1997; Dean, 1999). A specific modern form of power and rule,
governmentality describes a method of governing that arose, and was closely
allied with, the creation and growth of modern society’s ability to employ
more sophisticated methods of discipline and regulation, utilizing new tech-
nologies of observation, statistical analysis and administration oriented to
the welfare and productive efficiency of populations.
Understanding anti-social behaviour policy using the
‘governmentality’ thesis
Although O’Malley (1996, 2008), Garland (1997) Stenson (1999) and Rose
(2006) (among others) have presented ways in which the governmentality
thesis might be useful for enriching our understanding of the field of crime
control across advanced liberal democracies, it is housing studies scholars
who have driven academic theorizing on the Government’s ASB agenda,
and in so doing have drawn extensively on the language of governmentality.
This is precisely because social housing initially emerged as the key territory
for intervention in the governance of ASB (Burney, 1999) and it is the
insights from the housing studies literature that I focus primarily on here.
Pauline Card (2006) takes the concept of ‘political rationalities’ (Rose and
Miller, 1992) from the governmentality literature to describe the different
roles that have been ascribed to social housing since the early 20th century
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Theoretical Criminology 13(3)
and explores the impact of dominant ‘translation discourses’ that have
‘problematized’ housing estates and their tenants rendering them the subject
of new governmental technologies. ‘Political rationalities’ refer to forms of
calculation about political activity and are a form of governmental rationality
(Dean, 1999). They contain certain regularities including a moral dimension
(concerning the appropriate powers and distribution of tasks for different
forms of authority and the ideals to which the activities of government
should be directed), epistemological assumptions (how objects of govern-
ment are conceptualized) and a distinctive idiom that translates ‘reality’ into
a common language amenable to intervention. In her analysis, Card explains
the way in which the descriptions and definitions of social housing tenants
have changed over time, together with the techniques used to govern them,
according to the particular political rationalities that prevailed. In the present
era, Card suggests that social housing is rationalized as inherently flawed and
problematic on the basis of residualization (i.e. the concentration of the most
vulnerable groups in the social housing sector), while tenants are constructed
as morally deviant individuals who do not work, and are involved in crime
and ASB. This...
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